[css-text][text-spacing] Visual regressions of line-start at portals and news sites · Issue #9511 · w3c/csswg-drafts (original) (raw)

The current initial value of the text-spacing-trim property is space-first. This was chosen because the ideal value trim-auto turned out to break novel sites at #2462.

From dogfooding a prototype, the space-first turned out to regresss portal sites and news sites. The regressions were found at MSN Japan and Google News, occuring multiple times a day. Some consider this a minor visual regression, while others consider a critically blocking regression.

To summairze a long Japanese discussion at JLTF:

• Most think trim-auto is the ideal value for body text and headlines. Note, iOS 17/macOS Sonoma applies this style by default to their native controls.
• trim-auto still breaks documents using a style used by some novels, as reported at [css-text-4] Propose 'text-spacing: space-first' (trim-start-except-first-line) as a normal behavior #2462, while space-first doesn't.
• For other sites, trim-auto is ideal. space-first is a) less ideal for body text, b) quite strange for headlines, and c) critically regresses headline lists seen in portal top pages, news sites, blog sites, etc. (note the criticalness is controversial, some people consider it's minor in all cases, while others think critically blocking.)

From the feedback so far to the CSS prorotype, Android, and iOS, I think users/authors are particular about:

• Line start >>>> autospace >> adjuscent > line end

At this point, I can't find options other than defining a new value that doesn't trim line-start at all, and make it initial.

/cc @fantasai @frivoal @nt1m @vitorroriz @Clqsin45 @MurakamiShinyu @himorin @kidayasuo