Intent to Prototype: The "math" generic font family

[Frédéric Wang]

Contact emails

fw...@chromium.org

Explainer

https://people.igalia.com/fwang/explainer-font-family-math/

Specification

https://drafts.csswg.org/css-fonts/#font-family-prop

Summary

This generic font family allows authors to style content with a mathematical font. Main use case is MathML, since this would be the default font-family on <math> tags.

Blink component

Blink>Fonts

Motivation

- allow users to select a preference math fonts - allow authors to style content with a math fonts that has special features for rendering mathematical expressions (stretchy operators, math glyphs, etc) - render MathML content with a special math font instead of the one inherited from the parent.

Initial public proposal

TAG review

TAG review status

Not applicable

Risks

Interoperability and Compatibility

- Need to check whether Firefox and WebKit are ok with that.

Gecko: No signal (https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/564) Firefox has a user preference for the math font used for MathML. However, it's currently implemented via a fake "math" lang. I sent a request for position to see if using font-family: math instead would work better.

WebKit: No signal (https://lists.webkit.org/pipermail/webkit-dev/2021-August/031939.html) WebKit hardcodes a list of math fonts in the UA sheet. I sent a request for position to see if using font-family: math instead would work better.

Web developers: Positive Default math font is something that has historically been important for Firefox/WebKit users. This is something that was raised in the new MathML WG and had already been introduced in the CSS spec before, so there seem to be some interest.

Activation

We will likely need to extend the preference/UI, similar to what we have for other generic names.

Debuggability

font-family already handled by CSS DevTools interface.

Is this feature fully tested by web-platform-tests?

No

Flag name

Requires code in //chrome?

False

Tracking bug

https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=6606

Estimated milestones

Link to entry on the Chrome Platform Status

https://chromestatus.com/feature/5674318676623360

This intent message was generated by Chrome Platform Status.

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Frédéric Wang

[Frédéric Wang]

Hello, just to follow-up on this one, that feature will be included in https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/blink-dev/c/n4zf_3FWmAA since as explained in the original email, MathML is the main use case.

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Frédéric Wang