CSS text-transform is language-dependant: the Dutch case explained

Of course, editors should be using the ligature (unicode character LATIN SMALL LIGATURE IJ). But having said that: I'm Dutch and a) I have never used that character and b) I have no idea how to write it on a keyboard.

Re: CSS text-transform is language-dependant: the Dutch case explained

#5

Post by masklinn » Sun, Apr 01, 2012, 5:20 PM UTC

robin_reala wrote: post #3

pennig wrote: post #2

The code path for that case must be delightful.

Here's the diff: https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/bb53aec4a302 Doesn't look too bad

It's really weird that they just add special cases like that. Though I expect it's just because they don't have enough special cases yet (went from one — for the Turkish I — to two).

I'd have expected something like a generic Unicode-aware/y text management layer, and CSS text transforms would just go through that layer.

Re: CSS text-transform is language-dependant: the Dutch case explained

#6

Post by Nvn » Sun, Apr 01, 2012, 5:23 PM UTC

Michiel wrote: post #4

Of course, editors should be using the ligature (unicode character LATIN SMALL LIGATURE IJ). But having said that: I'm Dutch and a) I have never used that character and b) I have no idea how to write it on a keyboard.

That's actually discussed in the bug report[1] and apparently its use is discouraged by Unicode.

[1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=740477#c2

Re: CSS text-transform is language-dependant: the Dutch case explained

#7

Post by nemoniac » Sun, Apr 01, 2012, 6:31 PM UTC

Nvn wrote: post #6

Michiel wrote: post #4

Of course, editors should be using the ligature (unicode character LATIN SMALL LIGATURE IJ). But having said that: I'm Dutch and a) I have never used that character and b) I have no idea how to write it on a keyboard.

That's actually discussed in the bug report[1] and apparently its use is discouraged by Unicode. [1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=740477#c2

Unicode has a gazillion code points and it's discouraging us from writing our own language? Really?

Re: CSS text-transform is language-dependant: the Dutch case explained

#8

Post by Someone » Sun, Apr 01, 2012, 6:39 PM UTC

nemoniac wrote: post #7

Nvn wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's actually discussed in the bug report[1] and apparently its use is discouraged by Unicode. [1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=740477#c2

Unicode has a gazillion code points and it's discouraging us from writing our own language? Really?

http://unicode.org/faq/ligature_digraph.html:

A: The existing ligatures exist basically for compatibility and round-tripping with non-Unicode character sets. Their use is discouraged. No more will be encoded in any circumstances.

Re: CSS text-transform is language-dependant: the Dutch case explained

#9

Post by dasil003 » Sun, Apr 01, 2012, 7:13 PM UTC

I might be biased because I recently spent a couple days wrestling with it, but I think the Turkish case is more interesting. There are two vowels that use the letter I forms:

İ/i and I/ı

So the lowercase and uppercase are essentially split into two letters and then a new uppercase and lowercase form is created based on growing or shrinking the originals. I'm sure it seemed quite the elegant solution in the 1920s when they were working on the latinized Turkish alphabet.

The implication of this is that unlike the Dutch case, this affects all text-transform actions (uppercase, lowercase, and capitalize).

When we were doing our Turkish localized site I started digging into this, and I was horrified that no browser actually supports proper Turkish capitalization rules. Firefox in particular had a bug open since 2004 (now finally fixed as well). Asking around with Turkish web developers I heard of some crazy hacks (custom fonts!), but I got the feeling that Turkish web designers just avoid text-transform. This was not an option for us as we rely heavily on text-transform in our design (http://tr.mubi.com).

In the end I was able to piece together a surprisingly robust javascript replacement method with some help from Stack Overflow:

http://stackoverflow.com/a/8743095/8376

Re: CSS text-transform is language-dependant: the Dutch case explained

#10

Post by underwater » Sun, Apr 01, 2012, 7:29 PM UTC

masklinn wrote: post #5

robin_reala wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the diff: https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/bb53aec4a302 Doesn't look too bad

It's really weird that they just add special cases like that. Though I expect it's just because they don't have enough special cases yet (went from one — for the Turkish I — to two). I'd have expected something like a generic Unicode-aware/y text management layer, and CSS text transforms would just go through that layer.

Eek. Not only are they hardcoding the logic but they mix their CSS-specific code into the function. I understand that they are handling a limited number of cases now but if I came across that kind of code in my work I'd be very sceptical.