On 05/14/2011 12:41 AM, Boris Zbarsky wrote:
On 5/14/11 3:29 AM, Jukka K. Korpela wrote:
For example, when mentioning URLs in the text of a document, you
normally want to prevent line breaks in them by default and only allow
line breaks at specific points, as in
http://www.whatwg.org/<wbr>specs/<wbr>web-apps/<wbr>current-work/<wbr>multipage/
Oops, my newsreader introduced a line break after a hyphen. And such
behavior is common in web browsers as well. So it is natural to wrap
urls in text in <span class="url">...</span> with CSS rule .url {
white-space: nowrap; }.
Except that browsers don't support that, for the most part.
The problem you describe is one of breakpoint prioritization. I have no problem with
<wbr> getting priority over breakpoints
that the browser determines itself. CSS3 Text has explicit language to the
effect that not all breakpoint opportunities are
equal in section 7.1.
Anyway, the idea is to disallow line breaks (that would otherwise be
allowed by line breaking rules, whatever they might be in each
situation) _except_ where explicitly allowed by <wbr>.
This can be done by simply using "white-space: normal" and having UAs prioritize
breaks at <wbr> over other linebreaks, no?
Yes, but you'd get unexpected breaks where <nowrap> isn't used.
IIRC (this is going back > 10 yrs) <wbr> isn't supposed to have
a higher priority than spaces.
The HTML specs cannot dictate what CSS specs do
They're trying to, is my point. As an implementor I then have to reconcile the
conflict somehow. My current plan if it's up to
me is to do so by completely ignoring the part of HTML5 that's conflicting with
CSS here.
I agree that the HTML spec should not be trying to contradict or override
the CSS specs, and suggest that the HTML editor make a habit of posting
such issues to www-style to bring them to the CSS spec editors' attention
instead of merely writing overrides into the HTML spec...
So maybe the best way to convey the message is to remove the reference
to white-space and add a note on the _HTML_ element <nobr> (even if it
is kept as obsolete - the spec should still specify its meaning):
"The wbr element specifies a line breaking opportunity even when used
inside a nobr element."
I would be fine with that, if it's useful. Is it useful?
Yes, if you wanted to control breakpoints, <nobr>...<wbr>...</nobr>
was very useful.
I think it's possible to deal with the rendering requirements by
specifying
wbr { content: '\8203' /* zwsp */;
text-wrap: normal; }
Slightly off-topic: in CSS3, there is an 'avoid' value for 'text-wrap',
which is designed to solve problems similar to those currently dealt
with by using <nobr>/<wbr> combinations.
~fantasai
