Re: [css-inline] Over-constrained alignment of initial caps in figure

On Tuesday 2014-05-06 18:57 +0000, Cramer, Dave wrote:
> I'm trying to understand a (unnumbered) figure in Section 5.2 of the
> editor's draft of the CSS Line Layout Module [1]. The image is
> dc.lowercase.gif, and shows two different drop caps using lowercase "g"s.
> The right-hand image (am I allowed to say that on www-style?) shows a drop
> cap along with the following text:
> 
> >Example of drop cap using a lower case character with baseline alignment
> >point on the third line
> >and an additional constraint on the text-after-edge.
> 
> Is this over-constrained? The figure seems to show three alignment points:
> 
> [1] x-height of drop initial aligned with text-before-edge of rest of
> first line
> 
> [2] alphabetic baseline of drop initial aligned with baseline of 3rd line
> of text
> 
> [3] text-after-edge of drop initial aligned with baseline of 4th line of
> text
> 
> I don't see how that's possible, given that [1] plus either [2] or [3]
> would completely define the size and vertical position of the glyph. And I
> don't see how the spec would allow defining two separate "after"
> alignments.

I agree that it doesn't seem possible.  (At least, not unless
tweaking the line spacing to make it work was intended, but that
seems like a bad idea.)

> Did anyone ever implement this? Because of the working draft from 2002 on
> TR, these features are heavily documented on various websites and in
> books, but I haven't found any evidence of them in actual browsers.

I don't know of any implementations.

(Also, while I'm there, the initial value of 'drop-initial-value'
should be '1' rather than 'initial'.)

-David

-- 
𝄞   L. David Baron                         http://dbaron.org/   𝄂
𝄢   Mozilla                          https://www.mozilla.org/   𝄂
             Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
             What I was walling in or walling out,
             And to whom I was like to give offense.
               - Robert Frost, Mending Wall (1914)