[css-shapes] Allow shape-outside to apply to initial letter

[rachelandrew]

I think that authors would like to be able to use initial-letter with shape-outside. As the CSS WG have resolved that floats are ignored on an initial letter box, it now would not be possible to float the initial-letter in order to use shape-outside.

A solution (as mentioned in the f2f) would be to allow shape-outside on initial-letter.

[upsuper]

Hasn't that already been covered by the initial-letter-wrapping property (though at-risk) in the css-inline spec?

Or maybe you are proposing dropping initial-letter-wrapping in favor of shape-outside on initial letter?

[rachelandrew]

initial-letter-wrapping wouldn't allow for an arbitrary shape to be applied however, so the two use cases may be a bit different.

[fantasai]

OK, @dauwhe and I checked in edits to make the initial letter use shape-outside instead of the glyph outline when initial-letter-wrap is set to all. Let us know if this seems appropriate or if some other definition makes more sense?

[anjia]

Maybe the both shape-outside and glyph outline coexist could be better?

I think, for initial letter, if wrapping, most cases could be hoped to be wrapped by it's glyph outline
since this could perfectly fit the lines of the letter, which may be more difficult to achieve by using shape-outside.

By default, the initial letter use the glyph outline. And if website makers specify shape-outside property, then use the shape-outside.

[fantasai]

Yes, if shape-outside is none then we do the usual thing of using the glyph outline, of course. :) The question is whether it should key off of initial-letter-wrap: all or if shape-outside should always override even for other values of initial-letter-wrap.

[anjia]

Oh, yeah, I think I got the key point of this issue now.

I prefer shape-outside should always override .... Firstly, it's more simple to use, more easy to understand. Secondly, it's convenient to fallback. If it needs to specify the two properties like following.

initial-letter-wrap: all;
shape-outside: circle(); /* or something else */

And assume that if shape-outside is invalid (due to either the wrong value or browser compat),
it would become difficult to let the other behaviors of initial-letter-wrap to be valid, because it had been used to set to all the value to make shape-outside to work.

[anjia]

The question is whether it should key off of initial-letter-wrap: all or ...

@fantasai , I have a linguistic question to consult. What's the meaning of key off of? :)

[astearns]

@anjia that's just another way of asking the same question about overrides. If shape-outside would key off of the value all then it would only apply when that value was set and not be used when other values of initial-letter-wrap were used.

I think it might be better to recast initial-letter-wrap to have all as the initial value, defined to have all lines wrap around the rectangular shape or shape-outside, if one is defined. Then the value of first could be to wrap all lines but the first around the rect or shape-outside, etc.

[fantasai]

@astearns It was specifically requested that all not be the default since it is expensive to implement and is at-risk. Also, in your case, how would you get it to wrap around the glyph shape?? That's currently what all means.

[fantasai]

@anjia “key off” means “To take as a controlling input” according to wiktionary :) which is a very abstract way to define it. In this case it's setting a condition. I can't say I've ever really thought about the phrase too deeply, so I don't know how best to explain it. ^_^;;