Re: [css-text] Issue 18: character-based alignment in table columns

> On Jan 28, 2016, at 03:41, Dave Cramer <dauwhe@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> So where does that extra space go? In InDesign, numerals to the right of the alignment character are pushed right a bit. This leaves numerals to the left unaffected. 
> 
> If we center the alignment character, then numerals to the left shift a tiny bit right, and numerals to the right shift a tiny bit left. 
> 
> I think the InDesign behavior might be more desirable, given that numbers to the left are literally more important (and there are usually more of them). 

There can be situations where you've got more digits to the right than to the left, but I agree their less common than the other way around.

So unless we have a switch (which seems overkill), I agree with that.

By the way, are we talking about aligning to the left, or to the start? In typical rtl languages it wouldn't matter since numbers are ltr, but if we are actually aligning a rtl piece of text, then what? Is there any language in which this would matter? Without evidence that it would cause issues, I think this makes sense to keep it physical (line-left) rather than logical (start). Otherwise, we're opening new questions for when you try to align two rows with have different orientation

> Note I'm assuming that we're not messing with the text layout itself, i.e. not kerning around the alignment character to achieve some particular goal. And the lengths we're talking about are rather small... .026em is not very much. Of course if you're trying to align across significantly different font sizes (etc.), you're gonna have a bad time.

Right. I've though about playing with kerning / letter spacing, as well, and over small differences it might work, but I too left it assumed we wouldn't be doing that.

 - Florian

Received on Thursday, 28 January 2016 04:50:09 UTC