w3c / elreq

Ethiopic Layout Requirements
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Wordspace should be underlined #119

Open r12a opened 4 years ago

r12a commented 4 years ago

This issue is applicable to languages using the Ethiopic script, but the principle probably also applies to a number of archaic scripts.

We are currently investigating whether there is really an issue here.

When underlining a word followed by an ethiopic wordspace, the punctuation should also receive the underline. (See the relevant section in the Ethiopic Layout Requirements doc.)

The CSS Text Decoration spec, Level 4 currently says that text-decoration-skip:spaces would not underline Ethiopic word spaces. This seems like a basic issue.

A test is available for this, but text-decoration-skip:spaces doesn't appear to be supported yet by browsers. The issue may arise when implementations begin to provide support for that value.

r12a commented 4 years ago

The first comment in this issue contains text that will automatically appear in the Ethiopic gap-analysis document as a subsection with the same title as this issue. Any edits made to that comment will be immediately available in the document. Proposals for changes or discussion of the content can be made in comments below this point.

fantasai commented 4 years ago

text-decoration-skip: spaces isn't on by default, and won't be in the future either, it's opt-in. Given that, are you sure that Ethiopic word spaces should not be underlined even when the author has requested skipping spaces?

r12a commented 1 year ago

I've been thinking this through again, and about this being something the content author needs to request. I'm not sure that there's an issue here.

Ethiopic wordspace is underlined by default when text-decoration:underline is applied to some text (by all browser engines).

The question is, if the content author then goes on to also apply text-decoration-skip-spaces:all|start|end, which removes the underline from below spaces, should the underline also be removed from below the wordspace? It seems to me that if the author applies skip-spaces to Ethiopic text with wordspace separators, it's probably because they want to remove the underline from below the wordspace, no? If they don't want that to happen, then they should just not apply skip-spaces to the text.

@dyacob what do you think.

dyacob commented 1 year ago

@r12a Your take seems most natural regarding the expectation when using skip-spaces applied over text with the Ethiopic wordspace.

Not to complicate things, but... I believe an author using skip-spaces is primarily desiring that only words (letters) be underlined. Thus the wish is also to not underline Ethiopic Comma, Semicon, etc. that would be formatted (positioned between words) under the same rules as the wordspace. skip-spaces helps to that end, but leaves the author with a bit of manual work to remove the underline from regular punctuation. All a bit hypothetical, as I haven't come into this style in documents using workspace.