[css-inline-3] Naming Stuff

[fantasai]

Just a thread for some bikeshedding:

• The text-edge property: is this a good name? any better ideas?
• The leading value of text-edge, should it be normal? half-gap? something else?
• The text value of text-edge, is there a more descriptive word we could use?
• The leading-trim property: we have an outstanding resolution to rename to trim-leading, should we do that or something else?
• The inline-sizing property: see [css-inline] inline-sizing property name is too similar to inline-size #5189

[jantimon]

thanks for opening the discussion - there have been concerns about the term leading since 2018 😆

+1 for renaming the leading value to normal

that way it would be easier to memorise the value of the normal css behaviour.
it would also match with the initial value of text-edges and similar font properties:

leading-trim: normal;
text-edge: normal;
line-height: normal;
...

[oly-wan-kenobi]

+1 for the value normal

totally agree with @jantimon it fits in much better with the existing values.

[michaeltaranto]

A suggestion for an alternative to text-edge could be text-box-sizing. This would align it with existing terminology used by other properties, e.g. box-sizing.

Example in context:

.paragraph {
  font-size: 1em;
  text-box-sizing: cap;
}

[jantimon]

+1 for the text-box suggestion by @michaeltaranto.
Imho the consistency in terminology brings clarity and simplifies comprehension.

Here are some more examples:

default:

.paragraph {
  text-box-sizing: normal;
  text-box-trim: normal;
}

cap ✂️:

.paragraph {
  text-box-sizing: cap;
  text-box-trim: both;
}

cap alphabetic ✂️:

.paragraph {
  text-box-sizing: cap alphabetic;
  text-box-trim: both;
}

[scottkellum]

👍 renaming leading-trim and 👍 @jantimon’s text-box proposal above. This solves much of the confusion with the term leading.

I have been confused with the term leading here as this trims into the em box, not just the leading. Additionally design software and historical letterpress typesetting often use the term leading in conflicting ways. In my opinion, the term leading is best to avoid where possible.

[una]

+1 I think text-box (including text-box-trim) works here and aligns with some naming conventions of other CSS properties like text-transform, text-decoration, ++ and now text-wrap. Also reminds me of border-box/content-box, but for the text box, which seems like a good analogy here.

[shadeed]

👍 for text-box-sizing and text-box-trim suggested by @michaeltaranto. As @una said, it works well with other naming conventions.

I would suggest shortening the property name. For example, having text-trim and text-sizing is easier to type and memorize.

[jantimon]

Ben Holmes proposed to use none as default value for text-box-trim.
So the default behaviour values might be even easier to understand:

text-box-trim: none;
text-box-sizing: normal;

[davatron5000]

👋 Hi. I want this feature. I was asked to comment. I would probably yield to whatever @scottkellum thinks, he's the real expert.

I support the text-box-* naming system. I personally think of "leading" as the space between lines of text, and not so much the space added to the glyphs themselves which is what we're manipulating here.

I'd probably down vote text-edge. Makes me think of the text "river" at the inline-end edge of text reflow.

Appreciate all the work y'all are doing on this. Thanks!

[scottkellum]

Thank you for the kind words @davatron5000, lots of experts here but I’m glad my feedback is valuable. Tagging @nicksherman as I know he has thoughts on this that would be valuable to have documented in the thread.

[SebastianZ]

I just want to emphasize that giving them the same prefix makes it easier to introduce a shorthand for them. And those properties are presumably often used together.
Therefore, I am all for a shared prefix.

Sebastian