pretty value in the text-wrap doc is not fully documented

[Christopher-Hayes]

MDN URL

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/text-wrap

What specific section or headline is this issue about?

Syntax, Values, Formal Syntax

What information was incorrect, unhelpful, or incomplete?

The pretty value only shows up in the "Formal Syntax" section. Not mentioned in either "Syntax" or "Values".

What did you expect to see?

Seems like pretty should also show up in the "Syntax" section if it's in the "Formal Syntax" section.

It would also be helpful for pretty to be in the "Values" section which would explain what pretty does, (and ideally how it compares to balance)

Do you have any supporting links, references, or citations?

pretty is mentioned in the W3C working draft here:

https://www.w3.org/TR/css-text-4/#valdef-text-wrap-style-pretty

'pretty' Specifies the UA should bias for better layout over speed, and is expected to consider multiple lines, when making break decisions. Otherwise equivalent to auto,

NOTE: The auto value will typically map to Web browsers’ speedy legacy line breaking, which has so far used first-fit/greedy algorithms that can often give sub-optimal results. UAs can experiment with better line breaking algorithms with this default value, but as optimal results often take more time, pretty is offered as an opt-in to take more time for better results. The pretty value is intended for body text, where the last line is expected to be a bit shorter than the average line; the balance value is intended for titles and captions, where equal-length lines of text tend to be preferred; and the stable is intended for sections that are, or are likely become toggled as, editable.

Do you have anything more you want to share?

I also noticed the W3C working draft documents an auto value, which MDN doesn't mention. I would say auto should be added too; however, I'm noticing that Chrome's current implementation does not support auto as a valid value.

New spec note - This is a very much WIP / new spec. The W3C working draft was updated as recently as October 20, 2023. The current MDN page may very well be based on an older version of the working draft.

MDN metadata

Page report details

• Folder: en-us/web/css/text-wrap
• MDN URL: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/text-wrap
• GitHub URL: https://github.com/mdn/content/blob/main/files/en-us/web/css/text-wrap/index.md
• Last commit: 6c78931
• Document last modified: 2023-09-13T18:51:11.000Z

[Christopher-Hayes]

I'm not used to reading W3C working drafts. What's a little confusing is the values for text-wrap are actually a combination of both text-wrap-mode and text-wrap-style. What I'm talking about above is text-wrap-style. But, based on the W3C spec, text-wrap should also support the modes, wrap and nowrap. (Which this MDN page does mention as accepted values)

Not sure if text-wrap-style is expected to become a separate property, but at the moment Chrome's implementation doesn't support it.

text-wrap-mode: https://www.w3.org/TR/css-text-4/#propdef-text-wrap-mode
text-wrap-style: https://www.w3.org/TR/css-text-4/#propdef-text-wrap-style
text-wrap: https://www.w3.org/TR/css-text-4/#propdef-text-wrap
Which is documented as text-wrap: <'text-wrap-mode'> || <'text-wrap-style'>

[Christopher-Hayes]

An update to the "# Values" section might look like:

pretty

The browser will prioritize better layout over speed when making line break decisions. This value is intended for body text where the last line is expected to be shorter than the average, but may take more time to achieve optimal results.

[wbamberg]

Yes, see also #29065 (comment).

[pepelsbey]

Just like for #29065, we need to wait a bit until both spec and implementation settle before documenting it. The text-wrap: balance is coming in Firefox 121 in December (the second independent implementation) and we’re going to spend some time rewriting the docs to support the release.

[Josh-Cena]

Fixed by #30435