Spacing - issue 51

[lseeman]

Issue is at
#51

[alastc]

So for those who struggle with reading the code, the SC text is currently:

Spacing: Line spacing between paragraphs, blocks of text, graphics and embedded elements and objects and regions is at least 0.8em vertically and 0.5em horizontally and line spacing in cursive script languages have a line high of at least 150% unless a mechanism is available such that they can be increased up to 200% without loss of content or functionality. Level AA.

The and/or aspects are confusing me a bit, does this have the same meaning?

Line spacing between paragraphs, blocks of text, graphics, embedded elements, objects and regions is at least 0.8em vertically and 0.5em horizontally, unless a mechanism is available such that they can be increased up to 200% without loss of content or functionality.

Note: The equivalent spacing for cursive script languages is _____

Also, "line spacing" is what you have between lines within a paragraph (at least in CSS), but the wording implies you mean between paragraphs, is that right? In which case I'd just say "spacing".

For the units, it seems odd to say effectively: This is a good minimum spacing, but if you use less than that, allow it to be increased by 200%.

If the spacing is 0.2em then 200% of that is 0.4em, which presumably is not enough?

The "mechanism is available" currently means "provide a mechanism", and for layout that will continue to be the case, even if personalisation is available.

Why not just say "...at least 0.8em vertically and 0.5em horizontally, unless a mechanism is available such that they can be increased to that size." (if a mechanism provided, I think the "content and functionality" bit is implied otherwise the mechanism hasn't worked.)

Also, for the EM unit it's probably best to link to the CSS units definition.

Have you considered how much variability there will be? For example, 0.5em of a 30px heading is 15px, but around a paragraph of 12px text the spacing of 0.8em would be 6px. So you would get 'slanted' pages where the headings are more indented than the text.

Perhaps it would be better to base it on REM, which is bound to the HTML root font-size?

But then you could assume that people leave the default text size in their browser as 16px, so you might as well define it as 13 CSS pixels vertically and 8 CSS pixels horizontally...

Lastly, the LVTF #78 includes "spacing" in terms of line height, letter and word spacing, would it help to call this one "Block spacing" or something that implies it is for blocks of text?

So to combine that all into one proposal:

Block spacing: The spacing between paragraphs, blocks of text, graphics, embedded elements, objects and regions is at least 13 CSS pixels vertically and 8 CSS pixels horizontally unless a mechanism is available to increase the spacing to those sizes without loss of content or functionality. Level AA.

(I'm still confused about the line-spacing aspect for cursive fonts, is it definitely block spacing?)

[awkawk]

Text Spacing SC adopted, but not using this PR so closing.