- From: Alan Stearns <stearns@adobe.com>
- Date: Fri, 6 Feb 2015 04:38:44 +0000
- To: Peter Moulder <pjrm@mail.internode.on.net>
- CC: "www-style@w3.org" <www-style@w3.org>
On 2/6/15, 3:02 PM, "Peter Moulder" <pjrm@mail.internode.on.net> wrote: >On Fri, Feb 06, 2015 at 01:10:14AM +0000, Alan Stearns wrote: > >> > On Feb 6, 2015, at 11:57 AM, Peter Moulder >><pjrm@mail.internode.on.net> wrote: >> > >> > I'll write more later, but can I ask that we not add "balance" >> > without also adding at least "heading" ? >> >> Do you mean make the value "balance-heading" to distinguish the case >>from >> last line length? Or something else? > >Ah, I see the ambiguity. By "add 'balance' without adding 'heading'", I >meant >"that we not add a new value 'balance' without also adding at least a >'heading' >value". > >(Not that this feature needs to be implemented as new values to >'text-wrap'; > avoiding wrapping within a particular phrase is somewhat orthogonal to >the > overall choice of line breaks between the words & phrases of a block.) > > >Adding a bit more explanation now: Thanks for the in-depth explanation. This is quite helpful. > >I mean that the way to choose line breaks for a heading differs >substantially >from how one would choose line breaks for a caption, which differs (less >substantially) from how one would choose line breaks for a pull quote. > >I've noticed that good line breaks for a heading are often very >unbalanced: >phrasing considerations are much more important in headings than in >captions >and pull quotes. I am a little skeptical of a text-wrap value that will choose breaks using some sort of phrase analysis. This seems highly language- and context-dependent. It might be better to indicate phrasing in the markup (since it’s semantic) then use text-wrap:avoid for the phrase elements. That way the line break mechanism doesn’t have to guess at what is a significant phrase, will attempt to avoid breaking within a phrase, but breaks within a phrase will be allowed if absolutely necessary. > >Headings have an especially high preference for breaking at a colon, even >if >the result is very unbalanced. "From left to right:" would be a good >place >to end a line in a heading, but rarely in a caption. So perhaps in this case you’d have two spans in the heading, the first up to and including the colon, the second containing everything after. Those spans could have text-wrap:avoid to ensure the heading broke after the colon in a two-line situation, and that the break after the colon was preserved in cases where more line breaks were needed. From Left to Right: Moving Adroitly From Left to Right: Moving Adroitly > >Line breaking for captions is closer to that of a normal paragraph than >for >many of the other potential uses of balancing. That depends, I think, on whether the caption is longer or shorter. If it’s a paragraph-sized caption I agree, and I might not use text-wrap:balance in that situation. If it’s a shorter caption (particularly in video captioning) then it may look better with full balancing. As you note with block quotes below, balancing works best with a small number of lines (and as the number of lines grows, the actual change in line breaks when balancing diminishes). > Phrasing is still important >(you'd try not to break up a name in a caption of a photograph), but the >last >line of a paragraph will still often be shorter than the others. Captions >have a bit more need to be a similar width as other captions on the page >than for other potential uses of balancing. I agree that it may be better not to use balancing if/when there is more than one caption visible at the same time. > >Compare with a pull quote, where the last line can be as long or longer >than >the others (though many pull quotes do have a shorter last line), and it's >no problem for two pull quotes visible at the same time to have different >measures. I’m not sure that’s the case - if the pull quotes are in the same column, it can look strange to have different measures. > (snip things I generally agree with where I don’t have a useful comment) > >I don't think we can say much about how a balancing feature should behave >(how >length similarity should trade off against other line-breaking >considerations) >without considering particular uses. For the use cases mentioned above, >I'd be more interested in one of the other mechanisms mentioned above. >Most similar to a balancing declaration would be the "more free to reduce >apparent measure than in other paragraphs" declaration. I am definitely interested in eventually arriving at a place where we can express “more free to do this” and “try to avoid this other thing when possible” and have several inputs to line-breaking decisions be weighed against each other. But I unfortunately think that will take some time. Until then, I think a less-nuanced text-wrap:balance is still useful. Thanks, Alan
Received on Friday, 6 February 2015 04:39:13 UTC