w3c / w3c/csswg-drafts

[css-text-4] Virtual word boundary should not affect justification

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Closed Accepted as Editorial Commenter Response Pending css-text-4 i18n-needs-resolution
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Description

2.2.1. Detecting Word Boundaries: the word-boundary-detection property

A virtual word boundary is similar to the presence of the ZERO WIDTH SPACE (U+200B) character: it introduces a soft wrap opportunity and is affected by the word-boundary-expansion property. Its presence has no effect on text shaping, nor on word-spacing. However, inserting virtual word boundaries must have no effect on the underlying content, and must not affect the content of a plain text copy & paste operation.

The i18n WG thinks the text should probably also say that the virtual word boundary is invisible to justification algorithms (just like ZWSP), ie. add justification to the list after "Its presence has no effect on...".

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First steps

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  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start with the linked CSS Text 4 §2.2.1 section and review the wording around virtual word boundaries, text shaping, and word spacing. Update the specification text so justification is included among the unaffected algorithms, then verify the rendered section reflects the requested clarification.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
css
Domain
documentation
Issue type
Documentation
Difficulty
1/5
Estimated time
Under an hour
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Clearly specified
Newbie friendliness
45/100

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