Re: [css-gcpm][css-figures] float-offset & line rhythms

On 1/25/14 11:31 PM, "Liam R E Quin" <liam@w3.org> wrote:


>On Sat, 2014-01-25 at 19:45 -0800, Brad Kemper wrote:
>> > On Jan 25, 2014, at 2:21 PM, Håkon Wium Lie <howcome@opera.com> wrote:
>> >
>> > one can easily set the same rhythm by setting the same font &
>> >    line-height properties. This would cover most use cases, I think.
>>
>> Sorry, but the line-height property really sucks for baseline
>> alignment, because it only sets the minimum height of the line. All it
>> takes to royally screw it up is a <sup> or an <img>.
>
>That's true. A typographer/designer has to make a decision: do you make
>the line height enough to allow for superscripts and subscripts?

Yes, we (the royal "we" for the trade book publishing industry) always
make that decision: If a book has superscripts or subscripts, the leading
and the size of the superscripts will be such that they work well
together.

At least with Prince, setting line-height: 100% on inline elements
prevents inline boxes from mucking up the line-height. A fundamental rule
for us is that the leading in a paragraph never changes (except in some
very unusual designs).

>
>Often what happens in print is that the superscript crams itself very
>close to the line above, but is small enough to fit.
>

The default superscripts in most browsers seem very large to us. We
generally set the font size to 65%, so the superscript is both less garish
visually and less likely to crash into the line above.


>
>Note, I'd expect marginalia, initial caps, figure boxes etc. also to
>align to the baseline grid - and, if appropriate, running headers and
>footers.

Yes. Initial caps are a particular problem in CSS, which I believe should
be addressed, but that's another topic.

>
>> IMO, what we need here for rhythm layouts and baseline alignment is a
>> true 'linespacing' property that spaces all the lines of a block to an
>> exact measure (inheritable as an exact height). Thus, if I set
>> 'linespacing: 14px' on a paragraph, then the lines would be spaced
>> 14px from baseline to baseline, just like leading, even if it meant
>> the line boxes might overlap a little.
>Yes.

Yep.

>
>>  The tolerance for how much they could overlap could be set with
>> 'line-spacing-tolerance: <height>', and if 2 lines overlapped by more
>> than that much then the second line would be moved down to the next
>> multiple of the 'linespacing' value. Or maybe the tolerance could be
>> based on the largest leading value in the fonts being used on that
>> line or something.
>
>Yes, needs experiments.

Feel free to send requirements and use cases to the Digital Publishing
Interest Group [1].

Thanks!

Dave

[1] http://www.w3.org/dpub/IG/wiki/Task_Forces/Latinreq


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Received on Sunday, 26 January 2014 04:52:10 UTC