Re: [css3-fonts] "font-feature-settings: none" shorthand?

Glenn Adams wrote:

> I guess I should add that I plan to support a generic 'none' value
> no matter whether [css-fonts] adds it to the spec. 

Glenn, you seem to *really* want to add this value.  Could you explain
a little more why you think this is important?

The only difference between a 'none' value and the existing 'normal'
value of the 'font-feature-settings' is that default features are
enabled.  As listed in section 7.1 [1], features enabled by default
are some ligature, contextual form features, localized features and
features related to marks. Given that 'font-variant-ligatures' already
has a 'none' value to disable the default ligature and contextual form
features, that leaves only required ligatures, localized forms and
mark features. What possible use case is there for explicitly
disabling these off all together?

The use case you mentioned, of an Apache FOP user wanting to
experiment with "all features off" [2] really seems more appropriate to
'font-variant-ligatures: none; font-feature-settings: normal'. I doubt
they were even thinking about features required for proper rendering
of marks or Arabic.

It seems to me the chance of an author accidentally using this as a
type weapon of mass destruction is *far* higher than an author
actually using this for a purpose that can't be achieved more
intelligently either by disabling specific features or by using the
'none' value of 'font-variant-ligatures'.

Regards,

John Daggett

[1] http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css-fonts/#default-features
[2] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2013May/0774.html

Received on Thursday, 30 May 2013 23:37:23 UTC