Re: Follow-up on Balance Text Proposal

On Sun, Oct 12, 2014 at 9:17 AM, Zack Weinberg <zackw@panix.com> wrote:
> I'm concerned that this proposal codifies behavior at too low a level,
> making it difficult to do better in the future.  Specifically, because
> 'text-wrap: balance' is defined in terms of a concrete algorithm, it
> could wind up forcing browsers to implement that exact algorithm for
> 'text-wrap: balance', and, worse, forcing browsers to continue using
> first-fit for 'text-wrap: normal' permanently.
>
> I'm also concerned that this is a "yes, fix this bug" switch.  Under
> what circumstances would one NOT want a headline, a section heading,
> or indeed an entire paragraph to be wrapped such that all lines are of
> similar length?  Wouldn't it be better to encourage browsers to
> implement better algorithms *which are on by default*?

When you have a huge page of text which wasn't intended to be
displayed as a web page, but nonetheless is being viewed.  Don't wanna
crash your browser trying to optimally balance a 10k line "paragraph"
of JSON.

So it's hard to put this in the UA stylesheet, or build it into "normal".

~TJ

Received on Sunday, 12 October 2014 16:28:31 UTC