[css-fonts] Some properties may be shorthand for new ones.

Authors who want to display the numbers inside the element F in proportional form and with the same figures than his ancestor E should repeat the <numeric-figure-value> of E in the rule that sets the font-variant-numeric property for F. They may be tempted to avoid this repetition with the font-feature-settings property; in this case a repetion would be necessary to display the element of class .fraction as a stacked fraction, with the same numeric spacing than his ancestor F and the same figures than the ancestor E of F. 

That could be done easily if font-variant-numeric were a shorthand for the five properties : 
font-variant-numeric-figure, 
font-variant-numeric-spacing, 
font-variant-numeric-fraction, 
font-variant-numeric-ordinal, 
and font-variant-numeric-slashed-zero. 

These properties could be used in the same logic established since CSS1 with, for example, font-style and font-weight : there is no need to know if an element is bold for some reason to write the rule that displays some of his decendants in italic for another reason. 

E { font-variant-numeric-figure: old-style-num; 
} /* subjective aesthetic choice */ 
F { font-variant-numeric-spacing: proportional-nums; 
} /* because F does not contain tabular data */ 
..fraction { font-variant-numeric-fraction: stacked-fraction; 
} /* just because it's a fraction (not a date) */ 

Since authors would have no need to repeat themselves, they would not have the temptation to avoid repetitions by using the font-feature-settings property which is not entended for that. 

font-variant-numeric-figure, font-variant-numeric-spacing, font-variant-numeric-fraction are not properties of the fonts module, but their syntax are already explained as <numeric-figure-vales>, <numeric-spacing-values>, <numeric-fraction-values>. 

Similarily, 
font-variant-alternates may be a shorthand for : 
font-variant-alternates-stylistic, font-variant-alternates-historical-forms, font-variant-alternates-styleset, font-variant-alternates-character-variant, font-variant-alternates-swash, font-variant-alternates-ornaments and font-variant-alternates-annotation; 
font-variant-east-asian, a shorthand for : 
font-variant-east-asian-variant, font-variant-east-asian-width and font-variant-east-asian-ruby; 
and font-variant-ligatures, a shorthand for : 
font-variant-ligatures-common-lig, font-variant-ligatures-discretionary-lig, font-variant-ligatures-historical-lig and font-variant-ligatures-contextual-alt. 

I ensure you this is not a demand. 
Sorry to be so long. 
Regards. 
Jean-Pierre

Received on Thursday, 31 March 2016 23:14:46 UTC