- From: Chris Lilley <chris@w3.org>
- Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2014 18:18:44 +0100
- To: Simon Sapin <simon.sapin@exyr.org>
- CC: www-style@w3.org
Hello Simon, Friday, February 28, 2014, 11:58:31 AM, you wrote: > But what do you think of renaming "extent" a.k.a. "logical height" > to "block size", and "measure" a.k.a. "logical width" to "inline > size"? > I may be getting English wrong, but to me "extent" and "measure" are > both synonymous to "size". The verb "to measure" is the act of determining the size. The noun "the measure" is used both non-specifically/colloquially ("now I have the measure of your resolve") and also as a specific technical term in typography. > The terms by themselves don’t tell me which > is which. I understand (after reading it in the spec) that "measure" is > more specific in typography, but I don’t know how much of the "target > audience" is familiar with that. I wasn’t. Typographers and (print or web-and-print) designers are well aware of that term; its not clear that web-only designers are. This useage is not restricted to native-English, either. (Ask a French typographer, such as Jean François Porchez of Typofonderie, if they know the term "the measure"). Also, lots of things have inline and block dimension (the rendering of a span for example) while the measure is specific - its the length of a line of text between the margins, ie how far your eye has to scan over a line and scan back to the start of the next line. An over-long measure causes slower reading and increases errors of comprehension. Putting text into multiple columns has the effect of reducing the measure. > As far as I know, these terms do not appear in CSS syntax, so this > change would not affect implementations and would be only editorial. > It’s still a big change, though; several other specs are using these terms. I see from todays telcon "RESOLVED: Rename measure and extent to inline-something and block-something with something TBA ASAP" Okay, but (for the benefit of typographers and designers reading the spec) I would like to see the term "the measure" used as part of the textual explanation for inline-something - 'in typesetting, this is often called "the measure"' or something along those lines. -- Best regards, Chris mailto:chris@w3.org
Received on Wednesday, 12 March 2014 17:18:47 UTC