RE: [SVG2][css-inline] vertical-align, baseline-shift, alignment-baseline, dominant-baseline

On  Tuesday, May 20, 2014 9:03 PM

John Daggett wrote: 

>I don't think these baseline properties, 'dominant-baseline', 'alignment-baseline' and 'baseline-shift' are needed in CSS. They exist in SVG [1], [2], in XSL-FO [3] and in the old CSS3 Line Layout draft [4] but I don't that by itself is sufficient justification for moving them into a CSS on a REC track. As currently spec'ed in these various places I think they are overdesigned and, to a large degree, solutions in search of a problem.

>[...]

>The dominant baseline in a run of text should be inferred from the language attribute of the element, the script of the text content and the writing mode (horizontal or vertical). Authors shouldn't need to specify an *additional* property to have this set properly.

Would one still be able to top-align text from a generally base-line aligned language like English? See examples at ahttp://cs.sru.edu/~ddailey/svg/GeometricAccessibility.html . Orthographic play is widespread in the world of hand-printed or manually designed signs, ads, etc. It is only in the world of computing that designers have been forced (through artificial constraints) to flow text in the manner of the printing press. Currently, designers who desire typographic geometric expressiveness generally convert glyphs to bitmaps or characters to non-textual paths in order to accomplish these simple things, hence undermining accessibility. Orthographic play is not only done in math and science; it is far more prevalent in art and commerce. I often ask my students if they have ever noticed top-aligned or dual curve-aligned text in the world. Most say no. Then I tell them to keep their eyes open for a week. It is everywhere, and they come to realize it!

Cheers
David

Received on Wednesday, 21 May 2014 12:33:18 UTC