Re: [css-text] Arabic letters connecting between elements with display: inline

On 14-02-13 06:38 AM, Aharon (Vladimir) Lanin wrote:
>> I'll go as far as saying that a new property might be in order.  For example,
>> I can imagine, though not find in my references, that depending on taste, one
>> may or may not want joining in a drop-cap in Arabic.
> 
> Besides a value that prevents joining (i.e. puts a virtual ZWNJ at both ends)
> and a value that does nothing, do you think that a value that forces joining
> (i.e. puts ZWJ at both ends) is also useful / necessary?

No.  And that's not what I was implying.

> Given that the same effect can be achieved for when one wants to prevent
> joining by using :before + :after to insert ZWNJ, is a new property really
> necessary?

If we can unambiguously document what constitutes a shaping break that's
enough.  As far as we know Arabic is the only script affected, so it's a bit
hard to think in more general terms.  But then again, you can't really
convince, say, a Wordpress theme developer to add :after=ZWNJ to "fix" Arabic...


>> I don't think padding / margins should be relevant at all.  Letter-spacing
>> doesn't disable Arabic shaping.  Why should any other space do?
> 
> Because padding and margin are used to separate logically separate pieces of
> text. As for letter-spacing, wouldn't it be a lot more useful if it joined the
> letters with a longer line (tatweel-like), not leaving a space between them?

True.

> And if the answer is no, then it is obviously for some very special
> application when one really does want spaces between letters that should
> normally be joined, and no lesson can be learned from letter-spacing for
> padding and margin. I do realize that sometimes, mostly for educational
> purposes, one wants letters that are normally joined to be displayed with a
> space between them, but still shaped like they would be without the space, but
> I think that this is a very rare use case, and it could be achieved by using
> ZWJ when necessary..

I've seen many Persian blogs just use a theme that had letterspacing for the
title, and they seemed to be fine with it, or didn't know better.

> 
> On Wed, Feb 12, 2014 at 4:45 PM, Behdad Esfahbod <behdad@behdad.org
> <mailto:behdad@behdad.org>> wrote:
> 
>     On 14-02-07 03:44 PM, fantasai wrote:
>     >
>     > The issue is (as the title says) whether Arabic letters connect between
>     > elements with 'display: inline', for example in this case:
>     >   <p>foo<span color="blue">bar</span>baz</p>
> 
>     By default, they should, even if the spans use different fonts.  AFAIK no
>     browser currently does this, but it's good to document and require it.
> 
>     I'll go as far as saying that a new property might be in order.  For example,
>     I can imagine, though not find in my references, that depending on taste, one
>     may or may not want joining in a drop-cap in Arabic.
> 
>     I don't think padding / margins should be relevant at all.  Letter-spacing
>     doesn't disable Arabic shaping.  Why should any other space do?
> 
>     As for what should by default disable shaping across boundaries, I don't know.
>      Whatever initiates bidi:isolate is a good starting place indeed.
> 
>     --
>     behdad
>     http://behdad.org/
> 
> 

-- 
behdad
http://behdad.org/

Received on Thursday, 13 February 2014 19:49:03 UTC