Re: [office] Unicode relative spaces -- Was, proposal for new position and space attributes for the list level

[marbux <marbux@gmail.com>]

Sorry for the delay in responding. I had some catching up to do on
more urgent tasks.

[more inline]

On 2/20/07, Lars Oppermann <Lars.Oppermann@sun.com> wrote:
> Marbux,
>
> I am not entirely sure as to what is being proposed here. First of all,
> there is no problem with using the unicode *-space characters in
> OpenDocument text content. It is of course the responsibility of the
> application displaying the document to render those correctly.
>
> At what places in ODF exactly would you want to support horizontal
> measurements based on the font-size and what would be the
> reference-size? Are you going to implement this or is anyone else going to?
>

Hi, Lars,

I said earlier that I did not know of anyone who planned to implement
this at this time. That is why at this point, I am not asking that the
em-based system of measurements actually be added to the spec, only
that we not make changes, e.g., in lists, that would get in the way of
adding them later.

A apologize for my lack of clarity. Assuming that it were time to add
such support, then we have two separate but related issues: [i] adding
support for the Unicode space "characters;" and [ii] adding support
for the em-based relative system of measurement.

On the space characters, I agree that is largely an issue of
implementation in applications. However, I think there would be some
benefit to making their support mandatory in the ODF specification. As
I understand the situation, the digital type foundries do not include
the Unicode space characters as such in their fonts, albeit I have not
checked to see if their widths are included in font metadata. So I see
some benefit to including the characters, their definitions, and their
markup in the ODF specification.

On adding support for the em-based system of measurement to the spec,
I'm not sure  I understand your question as to reference size. For the
currently selected font, the reference size would be the horizontal
width equal to the font's vertical type size in points, exclusive of
any vertical padding between lines. So in 9 point type the em is 9
points wide, in 18 point type it is 18 points wide, etc.

As far as precisely where precisely in the ODF spec the em-based
system of measurements should be implemented, I am not ready to make
specific recommendations beyond ODF 1.1 section 16.1. My next area of
study is what XSL:FO and CSS 3.0 do with the system of measurement. I
hope that will shed a bit more light on what corresponding changes
would be needed in ODF. But I hope that folks might involve in the
discussion their respective organizations' accessibility experts. It
is both a usability and accessibility issue and to me getting it right
is more important than getting it included in ODF 1.2.

Best regards,

Marbux