Re: [css-ruby] Propose to use a different syntax for inter-character annotation

On Thu, Mar 12, 2015 at 5:32 AM, Richard Ishida <ishida@w3.org> wrote:

> On 09/03/2015 09:48, Xidorn Quan wrote:
>
>> I propose to remove inter-character keyword from ruby-position, and
>> handle annotation as inter-base annotation if the writing-mode of the
>> text container is orthogonal to that of the base container or ruby
>> container.
>>
>> The reasons are:
>> 1. We have met some style computation problems for the keyword
>> inter-character, like the cyclic dependency between writing-mode and
>> display. And solving those problems seem to be non-trivial.
>> 2. The behavior of an orthogonal text container is never defeined.
>> 3. The keyword inter-character could be confusing, because what it does
>> is not essentially inter-character. It is inter-base for horizontal
>> line, and not inter- anything at all for vertical line.
>>
>> For these reasons, I propose this change.
>>
>> The only concern for this proposal is that, it will make authors have to
>> add <rtc> for inter-character annotation, instead of just specifying the
>> proper ruby-position on some ancestor. But I guess it could be solved if
>> we backport the writing-mode of an anonymous text container from its
>> first child. Backporting a property to an anonymous box might probably
>> be less tricky.
>>
>
> I may be missing the point somewhere, but these are my first reactions,
> coming at this from a user perspective, rather than an immplementation
> perspective.
>
> I think we need to keep things as simple as possible for the content
> author – there are already quite a few complications for them to handle
> when dealing with writing modes, and bopomofo already requires a fair
> amount of markup.
>
> I always expected use of the 'inter-character' property to be *the thing
> that triggers* vertical alignment of the ruby text (per the spec), and that
> we would thereby spare the content author the trouble of adding an extra
> rule for writing mode, especially given that all 'inter-character' bopomofo
> is vertical anyway.
>
> Since this orientation is really only practically used for bopomofo ruby,
> i originally suggested that the property actually be called 'bopomofo'.
> Subsequent spec editors tried to make it sound a little more generic with
> 'inter-character', but, i'm not sure that there are any real use cases
> other than the bopmofo one (which is also what the spec implies, per my
> reading).
>
> I'd be really disappointed if authors had to add more markup, such as
> <rtc>, to make bopomofo work. Given that bopomofo *is* normally used after
> every character, rather than groups of characters, it would really mess up
> what was intended to be simple and easy to read/write semantic markup.


Yes, I realized that. That's why I propose to make anonymous ruby text
containers have their writing-mode from their first child instead of their
parent, so that the authors only need

rt { writing-mode: vertical-rl; }

would be enough, if they don't use any <rtc>.

Actually, I guess it might be good to always have anonymous ruby text
containers "inherit" styles from their child instead of their parent. I'd
like to open another thread to discuss this.

- Xidorn