[css-forms-1] Should appearance: base inherit more text-related properties?

[nt1m]

font is already inherited. What about other properties?

• text-shadow
• text-rendering
• letter-spacing
• word-spacing
• text-autospace
• text-transform
• text-align
• text-indent

These are currently reset on select, maybe they shouldn't be?

The reason I bring this up is because I was building a site, where I put form controls inside a table, made them transparent, and I found it desirable to inherit some of these properties from the table/body to the form controls.

cc @mfreed7 @josepharhar @emilio @fantasai

[josepharhar]

Sounds good to me. Should they be set to inherit or something else?

There's also a few more properties from appearance:auto that are being used in chromium. Should they be set to inherit or something else too?

• text-indent: 0px
• cursor: default
• white-space: pre

[nt1m]

@josepharhar @fantasai provided feedback that we should probably not inherit text-indent, text-align, and text-transform, which seems sensible to me.

[josepharhar]

If they don't inherit, then what values should they have? Should we use the values that I posted in my previous comment?

[nt1m]

They should probably just use their initial values

[nt1m]

@josepharhar Can you make the change in Chrome to reset text-indent, text-align, and text-transform to their initial value in base appearance? Given Chrome is shipping soon, it would be good to do.

[josepharhar]

After re-reading our earlier comments I realized that we weren't talking about the same properties. Should it look like this? cursor and white-space are set to inherit instead of initial:

• text-indent: initial
• text-align: initial
• text-transform: initial
• cursor: inherit
• white-space: inherit

[nt1m]

I'm not sure what to do with cursor or white-space, I'd be OK with status quo and filing a new issue to resolve on these

[css-meeting-bot]

The CSS Working Group just discussed [css-forms-1] Should `appearance: base` inherit more text-related properties?, and agreed to the following:

• RESOLVED: text-shadow, text-rendering, letter-spacing, word-spacing, text-autospace all inherit, and text-transform, text-align, text-indent are reset

The full IRC log of that discussion

<TabAtkins> ntim: so this is about inheriting more text-related properties in apperance:base
<TabAtkins> ntim: a few months ago i was playing with custom select in chrome, a few text properties weren't inherited
<TabAtkins> ntim: think wa sfixed in chrome, but no formal resolution
<TabAtkins> ntim: elika and i also discussed taht transform, align, and indent should not be inherited and should probably reset
<TabAtkins> ntim: any other thoughts on this?
<TabAtkins> TabAtkins: what are the properties we're adding?
<TabAtkins> ntim: there's a list in the issue
<TabAtkins> ntim: text-shadow, text-rendering, letter-sapcing, word-spacing, text-auto-space
<TabAtkins> ntim: and resetting text-transform, text-align, text-indent
<emilio> q+
<TabAtkins> TabAtkins: those all make sense to me
<astearns> ack emilio
<TabAtkins> emilio: do other form controls inherit any of these?
<TabAtkins> ntim: this is just for appearance:base, font and color already inherit
<TabAtkins> emilio: seems okay, a bit concerned about adding more dependencies from appearnce to random properties, in terms of causing confusion
<TabAtkins> emilio: but not objecting, if you think it's better that's okay
<TabAtkins> emilio: i'd just prefer to not do it if possible
<TabAtkins> ntim: the reason i filed this issue is i was doing a website and i wanted to put some inputs in a table, and wanted them to be transparent in the table, and table styles to inherit into them
<TabAtkins> ntim: just like a div
<TabAtkins> emilio: right. i don't know if introducing such strong differneces between base and auto will be a positive or negative in practice
<TabAtkins> emilio: like, this *is* something you can do today and it's already confusing for authors, adding more could be unfortuante
<TabAtkins> ntim: appearnce:base is kinda a chance to reset things and give authors a better behavior. basically the same behavior you get from a div on the page
<TabAtkins> emilio: but we're not *really* restarting, right, this value already exists
<astearns> ack dbaron
<TabAtkins> emilio: so i'm just not convinced it's much of a net benefit, but i don't want to block. just concerned it'll be more confusing than not
<TabAtkins> dbaron: almost a side comment, in support of text-indent and text-aling
<TabAtkins> dbaron: in some sense the logic of text-indent and text-align might have been better if they applied to a BFC rather than being inherited
<TabAtkins> dbaron: so it kinda makes sense to inherit those onto things that are likely to be blocks but reset on things likely to be inline-blcoks
<emilio> q+
<TabAtkins> dbaron: becuase you usually don't want them to inherit into inline blocks
<emilio> q-
<TabAtkins> dbaron: you probably don't want these to leak into the inline-block
<TabAtkins> dbaron: so given standard form styling, i think this makes sense
<astearns> ack fantasai
<TabAtkins> fantasai: +1 to what dbaron just said, that's a core part of the logic
<emilio> q+
<TabAtkins> fantasai: and the reason for blocking text-transform, unless the author specifically wants tex-ttransform to take affect, it's confusing to the user if what they see and what they type aren't the same. so authors should be explicit about this
<TabAtkins> fantasai: for the rest, i agree with Tim that the conceptual model for appearance:base is blending with the rest of the page
<TabAtkins> fantasai: and inheriting anything that affects text styles - not just font, but spacing and such as well - makes sense
<astearns> ack emilio
<TabAtkins> emilio: jsut clarifying, resetting those isn't really a behavior change
<TabAtkins> emilio: so we're in agreement there, and i generally agree with dbaron's points too
<TabAtkins> emilio: the behavior change is inheriting a bunch of new stuff (not resetting them, as we do today)
<TabAtkins> emilio: but i don't object
<TabAtkins> emilio: if we could explain it just via CSS it woudl be nicer
<TabAtkins> emilio: but this feels very cosmetic, easy to do if you need/want
<TabAtkins> emilio: i'd rather avoid the UA magic to get there
<astearns> ack fantasai
<TabAtkins> fantasai: if you think about appearance:normal, we're taking the OS appearnce and pulling it into the page. for appearance:base, we're blending it into the page.
<TabAtkins> fantasai: the styles we've set up - using currentcolor, a transparent bg, etc - achieves this
<TabAtkins> fantasai: having some things not apply is confusing for that mental model, and might not always be immediately noticeable
<TabAtkins> fantasai: as for style changing, we alreayd have to apply different props based on base or auto anyway, this is just another on the list
<fantasai> emilio, it's more magic from your point of view, but less magic from the author's point of view :)
<TabAtkins> ntim: so proposed resolution is we should inherit [the properties listed in the issue] and reset [the other properties listed in the issue]
<emilio> q+
<TabAtkins> fantasai: in other words we inherit text-tasnform, text-aling, and text-indent, and inherit everything else as normal
<astearns> ack emilio
<TabAtkins> emilio: do we mention cursor? unsure that should be inherited.
<TabAtkins> emilio: would rather go with an explicit list
<TabAtkins> fantasai: for white-space we should set it to 'pre', spaces should be visible since it's in the value
<TabAtkins> fantasai: for cursor, not sure what it normally does for text inputs, if it's different form the rest of the page we should set it accordingly
<TabAtkins> astearns: dont' think emilio was saying we should make a decision on those two properties, just because there are more complexities with styles, we should resolve on just this finite list of properties
<TabAtkins> emilio: yeah, i agree on those properties. in practice we only need to inherit some things that are reset by the UA stylesheet.
<astearns> ack dbaron
<fantasai> PROPOSED: Reset text-indent, text-align, and text-transform to initial values; set white-space to pre; and inherit all other text properties mentioned in the issue
<dbaron> I think the proposal is to inherit text-shadow text-rendering letter-spacing word-spacing text-autospace and to reset text-transform text-align text-indent
<TabAtkins> PROPOSED: text-shadow, text-rendering, letter-spacing, word-spacing, text-autospace all inherit, and text-transform, text-align, text-indent are reset
<TabAtkins> astearns: objections to these 8 properties?
<TabAtkins> RESOLVED: text-shadow, text-rendering, letter-spacing, word-spacing, text-autospace all inherit, and text-transform, text-align, text-indent are reset
<TabAtkins> astearns: a follow-on reoslution would be to have appearance:base set white-space:pre
<TabAtkins> ntim: that might be no change from current state?
<TabAtkins> dbaron: think it differs on control
<TabAtkins> astearns: another issue, then