[css-text-4] Make ideograph-alpha and ideograph-numeric part of text-spacing: normal #6950
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There's a double question here:
I believe you're right about what's good, but given that it is not the historical behavior and that plenty of content was written assuming it wouldn't happen, this is likely not to be compatible. We could maybe write an informative note giving a suggestion of an algorithm for the UA-dependent |
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I tried imagining scenarios where changing to more desirable defaults would make it incompatible with existing content, but I cannot come up with much. Content which already has extra space characters injected wouldn't be affected, because ideograph-alpha and ideograph-numeric do not insert additional spaces between characters and spaces. One case which may potentially be affected would be designs that emulate a terminal with mixed western/CJK text. Since there's no guarantee that the browser font selected for CJK will be an integer multiple of the monospace font selected for western text, any site which wants pixel-perfect alignment will likely already be breaking characters into blocks with hard-coded widths and/or CSS grid. Ideograph-alpha and ideograph-numeric should not interact across blocks, so there would not be any impact if implemented that way. About the behavior being turned off depending on the writing mode, I think I have approached it wrongly. It's more about the behavior of ideograph-alpha and ideograph-numeric itself, i.e. when turned on, spaces are only injected between characters in the same inline direction. |
Content that used to fit within a element of a certain given size is now longer due to these inserted spaces, no longer fits, and now breaks into two lines. If a paragraph of text goes from 7 to 8 lines, it's usually fine, but if a UI element like a button or a menu entry goes from 1 line to 2, there's not always room to fit that, and it can easily overflow. |
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Note the current specified value trim-adjacent and allow-end for normal also causes content to no longer align on character grid boundaries. Quad space is not much, has been universally used in commercial printing (sometimes more than quad, so the western text takes up a whole number of CJK characters), and is still better for alignment than a full space. Also it's quite unlikely for UI to have mixed script CJK & Western; it is usually considered bad style. The vast majority of script mixing would be in titles, slogans and prose. |
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Would there be an update to this issue? |
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English reader here who has a bare acquaintance with Chinese text. As a webmaster, I would prefer that the default behavior, not inserting automatic spaces on language switch between CJK and Western, not be changed and that any new behaviors, such as automatically inserting spaces, need to be explicitly stated through a non-default property. This would prevent breaking legacy content. I checked with two colleagues who have professional experience in Chinese-language media and here are their responses on the proposal: Jay Lu:
Jessie Liang:
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It's not an easy call, one way or the other. If autospacing is made the default, it's possible that some web text somewhere might grow a little, although it's not clear to me how many cases like that exist, and it may be a small number. On the other hand, if spacing is preferred and the behaviour has to be applied manually to all Chinese and Japanese text in the future, that's a pain in the neck (for all web pages going forward, forever). Especially in cases such as where text is converted automatically from markdown, or where strings from a database or field-based input from users are integrated into a document that doesn't have styling for Chinese, and so on. I raised a separate issue for the following comments. See #7183
[1] @CharlesBelov makes a case for no autospacing in some types of text. Of course, one possibility would be to have a value that turns default autospacing off, except that we don't appear to have one, and that leads to another thought. It suggests that it would also not be possible to have, say, autospacing set for the document as a whole (by default or by a style declaration), and then turn it off for some parts of the content. [2] Another feature that might be useful is the ability to say, "If spaces have been used in an existing text between Han and ASCII alphanumeric text, rather than adding an even larger gap if autospacing is turned on (1/4 em plus the existing space character), replace the existing space with a 1/4em gap." That would make it easier to have consistent spacing when mixing text from different sources on the same page (especially including user input via forms, where they may add spaces). That would also allow content authors to apply autospacing without being concerned that existing text would wrap onto 2 lines, as @frivoal fears.
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See #7183
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These "spaces" need special handling not normally found in Western typography, in that they compress more readily than Western spaces would in a tight justification scenario, and they would do so before any adjustments would be applied to U+0020 characters' widths. So, this is a new concept and has complexity. The Japanese case is more so, in that spacing around full-width punctuation is added to the prioritized list of spacing to be adjusted. These adjustment considerations need to be accounted for in the feature or it may not work well. |
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I think those features would be accounted for in the justification algorithm, no? |
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I'm not sure I've been understood. That Microsoft Word does autospacing when mixing CJK and Western text does not make it correct (or wrong, for that matter). My concern is that you appear to be proposing to implement something that changes default behavior whether a site wants it or not, resulting in breaking existing content, based on your perception that adding spacing looks better. I have had two professionals who come from journalism tell me that removing spacing looks better, with adding spaces being reserved for special use cases. Again, I am not an expert in Chinese, so take my random search judiciously, but in visits to four Chinese newspaper websites, all four sites had examples of mixed content where it appears there is intentionally no spaces between CJK and Western text. No endorsement of the content is intended; these are merely examples of Chinese content with strings of Western text. https://language.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202203/29/WS6242d221a310fd2b29e53fc5.html (China Daily) https://www.zaobao.com.sg/lifestyle/columns/story20220328-1256766 (Zaobao Singapore) https://www.chinatimes.com/realtimenews/20220330001102-260403 (China Times, Taiwan) I acknowledge I did see in my searching discussions on this issue asserting that web designers like to add spacing in these cases. So I am fully in support of adding the automated capability. I am only concerned with the idea of making it the default behavior to the point where it breaks existing content or changes existing behavior to enforce a behavior that appears to not have agreement between designers and journalists. I want to urge that when the CSS Working Group discusses the outcome of this issue, that they respect legacy content. If I misunderstood that you intend added spacing to be the default behavior, my apologies. |
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According to my observations, the two cases (non-ideographic letters and numerals) are not the same. But in either case, you can find examples with and without extra spacing on the market. Note that I am only talking about print publications here. I'm not talking about the web because no browsers currently support Here are a few examples: Reference News in 2014: There's extra spacing between runs of ideographs and non-ideographic numerals. People's Daily in 2022: There's no extra spacing between runs of ideographs and non-ideographic letters. ネットワークはなぜつながるのか 第2版 in Chinese: There's extra spacing between runs of ideographs and non-ideographic letters. |
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@CharlesBelov if by 'you' you mean me, i was not proposing a particular default, just voicing some factors that need to be taken into consideration. I edited my comment a little to hopefully make it clearer. The main point of my comment was the stuff below the line that i added. hth |
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Btw, i'd urge a little caution in basing decisions solely on online text. It may indicate a fundamental preference for no autospacing. Or it may be done because without a proper way of typesetting online text so that it has the right size of gap, no gap looks better. It may even be the case that this is a new trend that is becoming normalised. Across many languages i see approaches to typography that have been produced by the inability of technology to do what's really wanted, and several cases where this is just accepted, or even starting to become considered as normal. So, I think it's also important to also consider common approaches in quality printed text, where correct autospacing can be applied if desired, and @xfq provides several examples just above that suggest that autospacing is used in such. I await with interest the advice of people (such as the clreq group) that have expertise in Chinese typography as to what should be the best default – although there may not be a clear answer even then. |
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The following examples are from the print version of SingTao Daily, April 4, 2022, as published in San Francisco, CA. These images are intended solely for the demonstration of newspaper typography and were selected by me. No endorsement or criticism of the source, content or issues covered is implied. The image shows excerpts of headline and story body text, demonstrating apparently intentional lack of a space when switching between Latin and Chinese characters. I don't deny that some publications apparently (from the images in above posts) add a space. It's just that if some publications consistently and intentionally add a space and others consistently don't add spacing, we cannot assume any default desired behavior, and any enforcement of behavior must be explicitly stated through a targeted keyword rather than folding this behavior into unrelated keywords. |
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The Chinese Layout Task Force discussed this issue. Most group participants think that ideally, there should be extra spacing between Han and Western text. The specific value can be discussed separately, but the TF members think 1/8em is an acceptable default value for the Web (for print publications, the spacing can be larger). Many people think that solid setting between Han and Western text is bad typography. Also, some think that Japanese is more tolerant of not having the extra spacing, because unlike Chinese, the Japanese writing system uses a combination of a variety of scripts. The Japanese version of some apps do not have extra spacing by default, while the Chinese version of the same app have extra spacing by default. But since this is original research of the clreq group, and I'll let the jlreq group share what they think. If the CSS Working Group decides not to change the default due to compatibility issues, we (the clreq group) are fine with that. The clreq group members think that this is an important issue, and maybe even the most important issue that CSS needs to solve now for Chinese typography. Because browsers don't support |
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I just came across something possibly relevant to this issue. A user of the not-hugely-popular note-taking app Logseq wrote a plugin to render extra spaces between Chinese and Latin characters. This little mod – one of a few dozen Logseq plugins – might be a pithy example of how end-users tend to go about implementing makeshift solutions in the absence of a better default or wider browser support for a modern feature, and might also convey the importance of this aspect of typography as it was enough for someone a bit savvy to spend the time creating and then to publish it for others to use to their advantage. |
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I notice Microsoft Word has an option under File > Options > Proofing > Auto Correct Options... > AutoFormat as you type: Delete needless spaces between Asian and Western text Which indicates to me that, even if the default in Word might be to insert such spaces, there are enough subscribers to the worldview that the spaces are not to be used that someone would need a setting in Word to automatically and actively delete such spaces. |
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That option is about manually added whitespace ( @CharlesBelov What you are looking for is probably Format > Paragraph... > Asian Typography. In the Asian Typography task pane, there are two checkboxes:
But whether an option exists has nothing to do with this issue, which is about the default behavior (because CSS already has such a property, and it's been around for years). |
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Sorry for late response, although I've catched this earlier but could not secure time on this. Several random notes: |
FWIW, here are some examples for Chinese: |
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Recommendation from i18n is to make this part of the initial value if Web-compatible. |
…o non-zero margin/border/padding w3c#6950
…o non-zero margin/border/padding w3c#6950
…o non-zero margin/border/padding w3c#6950
…o non-zero margin/border/padding w3c#6950
…o non-zero margin/border/padding #6950
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Edits committed. Florian and I went with specifying 1/8ic as the spacing, since we wanted to stay on the conservative side if we're inserting spaces by default. Please file follow-up issues about anything that needs further adjustment. Also, there's a follow-up issue about replacing spaces with auto-spacing at #8263 |
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The
I am a little confused about the "baseline behavior. Before ideograph-alpha and ideograph-numeric were added to However, after ideograph-alpha and ideograph-numeric were added to Then I decided to interpret it as follows:
(I implemented it in Vivliostyle.js as per this interpretation. vivliostyle/vivliostyle.js#1080) However this spec is not very clear and not very useful. It would be better adding a new keyword, The |
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Or maybe it would be better to change the
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@MurakamiShinyu I raised your two comments above a a separate issue #8288, as I think it will be more easily tracked this way. |
…o non-zero margin/border/padding w3c#6950
* Remove non-useful keyword combinations #4246 #8288 * Split into longhands #4246 #7183 #8288 * Ensure off values for each thing #8288 #6950 * Add insert|replace to allow replacing incorrect space characters #318 #8263 #7183 * Make space-first the initial value #2462 * Allow hanging-punctuation to hang leading ideographic spaces #2462 * Move no-compress to text-justify #7079 See https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2023Feb/0002.html
The baseline behaviour of text-spacing should always turn on ideograph-alpha and ideograph-numeric when in the horizontal writing direction. In the vertical direction, it should be turned on when the western text is rotated1 and turned off if the western text is not2.
Microsoft Word has ideograph-alpha/ideograph-numeric turned on by default. The iOS UI also has this spacing, but I'm not sure if it's done on the rendering level, or spaces are injected during string interpolation.
On other platforms, it is not supported out of the box. Authors end up adding spaces themselves inconsistently, leading to horrible UIs like this:
CSS should support this turned on as the default.
There may also need to be an additional property for authors to specify the width of the inserted space they want. The default 1/4 space is fine.
Footnotes
See CLREQ Figure 8. ↩
See CLREQ Figure 7. ↩
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