Intent to Prototype: CSS Initial Letters

[Yoshifumi Inoue]

Contact emails

yo...@chromium.org, ko...@chromium.org

Explainer

None

Specification

https://drafts.csswg.org/css-inline/#initial-letter-styling

Summary

Initial letters are large, decorative letters have been used to start new sections of text since before the invention of printing. In fact, their use predates lowercase letters entirely.

Blink will support the CSS property "initial-letter".

Blink component

Blink>Layout>Inline

Motivation

It’s implemented only in WebKit, but the usage is high: * 40.2% usage ratio according to CSS2021 Usage Overview[1]. * 23.9% have used it according to CSS2021 Typography features[2]. [1] https://2021.stateofcss.com/en-US/features/#features_overview [2] https://2021.stateofcss.com/en-US/features/typography/#initial_letter

Initial public proposal

TAG review

TAG review status

Not applicable

Risks

Interoperability and Compatibility

Gecko: Working  https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=136484

WebKit: Shipped. "initial-letter" and "-webkit-initial-letter" properties

Web developers: 59.5% developers know

Other signals:

WebView application risks

Does this intent deprecate or change behavior of existing APIs, such that it has potentially high risk for Android WebView-based applications?

Debuggability

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

We will have tests.

Flag name

CSSInitialLetter

Requires code in //chrome?

False

Tracking bug

https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1276900

Estimated milestones

No milestones specified

Link to entry on the Chrome Platform Status

https://chromestatus.com/feature/5167442033115136

This intent message was generated by Chrome Platform Status.

[Manuel Rego Casasnovas]

On 13/10/2022 06:39, Yoshifumi Inoue wrote:
> /Gecko/: Working  https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=136484
> <https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=136484>

Wrong link, this is a WebKit bug.

If the link is https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1223880 it
doesn't seem they are working working on it.
> /WebKit/: Shipped. "initial-letter" and "-webkit-initial-letter" properties

It looks it only shipped the prefixed version:
https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=229090

How is the interop between Blink and WebKit implenetations?
For example from a quick test of the MDN page, WebKit doesn't support
decimal values.

There are also a few CSSWG issues open, are them important? Should we
try to resolve them before shipping?

Cheers,
Rego

[Ian Kilpatrick]

On Fri, Oct 14, 2022 at 12:44 AM Manuel Rego Casasnovas <re...@igalia.com> wrote:

On 13/10/2022 06:39, Yoshifumi Inoue wrote:
> /Gecko/: Working  https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=136484
> <https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=136484>

Wrong link, this is a WebKit bug.

If the link is https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1223880 it
doesn't seem they are working working on it.
> /WebKit/: Shipped. "initial-letter" and "-webkit-initial-letter" properties

It looks it only shipped the prefixed version:
https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=229090

How is the interop between Blink and WebKit implenetations?
For example from a quick test of the MDN page, WebKit doesn't support
decimal values.

The current prefixed WebKit implementation has a number of issues, primarily around being a float based implementation. (I can share specific testcases if interested - but here is one example - https://www.software.hixie.ch/utilities/js/live-dom-viewer/?saved=10878).

 

We plan on adding test cases for these more complex float/initial-letter interactions.

There are also a few CSSWG issues open, are them important? Should we
try to resolve them before shipping?

We haven't done an extensive review of the issues yet - but we didn't see too many that are concerning. A lot of the open issues are for additional features on top of the basic initial-letter support. Are there any issues which you feel are concerning at the moment?

Ian

 

Cheers,
  Rego

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[Manuel Rego Casasnovas]

On 14/10/2022 18:03, Ian Kilpatrick wrote:
>
> There are also a few CSSWG issues open, are them important? Should we
> try to resolve them before shipping?
>
>
> We haven't done an extensive review of the issues yet - but we didn't
> see too many that are concerning. A lot of the open issues are for
> additional features on top of the basic initial-letter support. Are
> there any issues which you feel are concerning at the moment?

This is an intent to prototype, so I guess it's not urgent or anything.
But if there are open issues and some could be closed as part of this
work, it'd be nice.

Cheers,
Rego