7 ms·

Adobe and Google enhancing WebKit for better typography

83 points by kreek 16y ago

gallerytungsten 16y ago
This is an interesting demo, but it seems to focus more on "whizzy" things, instead of fixing more basic problem. Now, in their defense, I thought the baseline alignment idea was pretty good. But if you look at their first demo of the "callout" text, you'll note that there are horrible rivers (open spaces) running through the type, making it look all clunky. What's really needed is a straightforward wysiwig layout tool (like Quark or Illustrator, for example) that can generate clean CSS layouts.
itg 16y ago
Interesting response in the comments section http://bureau.tsailly.net/2010/11/wow-adobe-is-really-cool.html http://bureau.tsailly.net/2010/11/wow-adobe-is-really-cool.h...
- amadiver 16y ago
  That article would have been a lot more useful if they reduced the snark. Thank you for linking it though.
  - othermaciej 16y ago
    Must admit, I was surprised to see all this publicity for the demo but they have not posted a patch nor shown their code changes to the folks who maintain WebKit's text layout code.
  - thwarted 16y ago
    Snark indeed. All of paragraph 5 could have been left out. As for the communication part, there is a name which, because it is omitted with so much efforts, can only be noticed: Apple. They are working with Google to enhance Webkit, not Google and Apple, the originator of Webkit. Apple was, apparently, so slighted by this ommission that we have to forget that Apple derived the WebKit code from KHTML. "Originated" is kind of a strong word. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebKit#Origins http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebKit#Origins
    - GHFigs 16y ago
      Snark indeed.
- barclay 16y ago
  Whoa. I'm surprised by John's rather dickish reply to this in the comments. He totally could have (should have) taken the high road and recognized the lacking of good typography controls. And pointed out that this was just a tech demo and Adobe's excited to do all it can to improve type on the web.
  - Lazlo_Nibble 16y ago
    They're a little touchy over at Adobe these days.
aristus 16y ago
:( No hyphenation, kerning or leading. Knuth and Liang solved this problem decades ago. I dislike like having to hack it with Javascript. That lack is what makes web typography ugly, even in this demo.
- foljs 16y ago
  Yes, they solved it alright. In an entirely different context.
  - aristus 16y ago
    I don't understand what you mean. I'm using the original vccv TeX algorithm in my Sweet Justice library and it works decently. There is also Hyphenator which uses Liang's algo and supports dozens of languages. The web case is very similar to the desktop publishing case.
    - foljs 16y ago
      Web/DTP is not the same thing at all. DTP is static. The web is dynamic. You can envision some paragraphs of text in a blog post being re-flown but the web is more than that. What about interactive text? Text in SVG? Multi-language text in the same paragraph? Various stacks of text in varying z-indexes, css-3 animated? Text manipulated with Ajax? In a mobile browser AND in the desktop. Not so easy anymore when you have to cover all of those --and possibly in a W3C or HTML5 sanctioned way, compatible with concepts like "overflow" and all.
  - RodgerTheGreat 16y ago
    Can you point out some reasons the algorithms in TeX cannot apply to reflowing text in a browser, rather than a static page? It seems like a very similar context to me.
    - neild 16y ago
      My understanding is that the reason WebKit does not use the TeX layout algorithm is performance. WebKit has a zero-tolerance policy on performance regressions; the only way the TeX layout algorithm will make it in is if it can do so without sacrificing rendering speed.
wdewind 16y ago
Web kit is a fail that has a tiny percentage of the browser use. Safari has too small of a % to be relevant (except mobile obv), and Chrome just screws up too many small things (despite being an otherwise overwhelmingly better browser than the alternatives).
- masklinn 16y ago
  > Web kit is a fail How? > that has a tiny percentage of the browser use Yeah, on the desktop, now consider the fast-growing mobilespace. iOS? Webkit. Android? Webkit. WebOS? Webkit. Blackberry 6? Webkit. Bada? Webkit. And they're making deep inroads in libraries (QtWebkit, which means all of Nokia's future is likely linked to webkit as well) and embedded in software (Steam switched fully to webkit a while ago). Webkit definitely isn't "a fail". Not in the long run (it will keep growing in importance) but not right now either, it's given a good kick to the 'nads to the Mozilla team, it iterates and develops fast (and is a standard driver), it's where innovation now happens in the OSS browserspace (the other source of innovation being mostly Opera) and the sole reason we have mobile browsers worth using these days is webkit. Webkit is a resounding success considering the first public release was 7 years ago and pretty dreadful.
  - wdewind 16y ago
    I guess you ignored the part where I said except mobile obv. My biggest issue with webkit is that there was a perfectly fine rendering engine to begin with that both Safari and Chrome could've simply built a new UI around. Instead they gave us yet another OS to support. Web developers complain all the time about supporting multiple browsers, yet support web kit? And for the record, steam is a great example of what I'm talking about: completely mediocre rendering performance for really simple tasks (essentially a web browser). It's shocking how bad web content looks in steam, I'm kind of surprised you even brought it up. Yes - Webkit long term will be good, it can't not (even IE9 is looking alright at this point). Right now though (ruling out IE6), > 50% of my web dev cross browser issues are dealing with web kit, not IE7+, and for a much less significant audience (ie: expensive). So you're right, it's not a "fail," but I think how great the response is to it is really disproportional. I REALLY want to love chrome etc but I just can't - it's not ready yet.
starpilot 16y ago
The least they could do is have the q tag render with smart quotes. This is already handled in Firefox properly.
- masklinn 16y ago
  > The least they could do is have the q tag render with smart quotes Fuck no. I will decide on the fucking quotes I want around my quotes, unless you decide to cleanly and perfectly support all international quote style guides[0], you do not touch the content I create and you do not start changing my quotes. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotation_mark,_non-English_usage http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotation_mark,_non-English_usa...

83 points by kreek 16y ago

This is an interesting demo, but it seems to focus more on "whizzy" things, instead of fixing more basic problem. Now, in their defense, I thought the baseline alignment idea was pretty good. But if you look at their first demo of the "callout" text, you'll note that there are horrible rivers (open spaces) running through the type, making it look all clunky. What's really needed is a straightforward wysiwig layout tool (like Quark or Illustrator, for example) that can generate clean CSS layouts.

itg 16y ago

Interesting response in the comments section http://bureau.tsailly.net/2010/11/wow-adobe-is-really-cool.html http://bureau.tsailly.net/2010/11/wow-adobe-is-really-cool.h...

amadiver 16y ago
That article would have been a lot more useful if they reduced the snark. Thank you for linking it though.
- othermaciej 16y ago
  Must admit, I was surprised to see all this publicity for the demo but they have not posted a patch nor shown their code changes to the folks who maintain WebKit's text layout code.
- thwarted 16y ago
  Snark indeed. All of paragraph 5 could have been left out. As for the communication part, there is a name which, because it is omitted with so much efforts, can only be noticed: Apple. They are working with Google to enhance Webkit, not Google and Apple, the originator of Webkit. Apple was, apparently, so slighted by this ommission that we have to forget that Apple derived the WebKit code from KHTML. "Originated" is kind of a strong word. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebKit#Origins http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebKit#Origins
  - GHFigs 16y ago
    Snark indeed.
barclay 16y ago
Whoa. I'm surprised by John's rather dickish reply to this in the comments. He totally could have (should have) taken the high road and recognized the lacking of good typography controls. And pointed out that this was just a tech demo and Adobe's excited to do all it can to improve type on the web.
- Lazlo_Nibble 16y ago
  They're a little touchy over at Adobe these days.

aristus 16y ago

:( No hyphenation, kerning or leading. Knuth and Liang solved this problem decades ago. I dislike like having to hack it with Javascript. That lack is what makes web typography ugly, even in this demo.

foljs 16y ago
Yes, they solved it alright. In an entirely different context.
- aristus 16y ago
  I don't understand what you mean. I'm using the original vccv TeX algorithm in my Sweet Justice library and it works decently. There is also Hyphenator which uses Liang's algo and supports dozens of languages. The web case is very similar to the desktop publishing case.
  - foljs 16y ago
    Web/DTP is not the same thing at all. DTP is static. The web is dynamic. You can envision some paragraphs of text in a blog post being re-flown but the web is more than that. What about interactive text? Text in SVG? Multi-language text in the same paragraph? Various stacks of text in varying z-indexes, css-3 animated? Text manipulated with Ajax? In a mobile browser AND in the desktop. Not so easy anymore when you have to cover all of those --and possibly in a W3C or HTML5 sanctioned way, compatible with concepts like "overflow" and all.
- RodgerTheGreat 16y ago
  Can you point out some reasons the algorithms in TeX cannot apply to reflowing text in a browser, rather than a static page? It seems like a very similar context to me.
  - neild 16y ago
    My understanding is that the reason WebKit does not use the TeX layout algorithm is performance. WebKit has a zero-tolerance policy on performance regressions; the only way the TeX layout algorithm will make it in is if it can do so without sacrificing rendering speed.

wdewind 16y ago

Web kit is a fail that has a tiny percentage of the browser use. Safari has too small of a % to be relevant (except mobile obv), and Chrome just screws up too many small things (despite being an otherwise overwhelmingly better browser than the alternatives).

masklinn 16y ago
> Web kit is a fail How? > that has a tiny percentage of the browser use Yeah, on the desktop, now consider the fast-growing mobilespace. iOS? Webkit. Android? Webkit. WebOS? Webkit. Blackberry 6? Webkit. Bada? Webkit. And they're making deep inroads in libraries (QtWebkit, which means all of Nokia's future is likely linked to webkit as well) and embedded in software (Steam switched fully to webkit a while ago). Webkit definitely isn't "a fail". Not in the long run (it will keep growing in importance) but not right now either, it's given a good kick to the 'nads to the Mozilla team, it iterates and develops fast (and is a standard driver), it's where innovation now happens in the OSS browserspace (the other source of innovation being mostly Opera) and the sole reason we have mobile browsers worth using these days is webkit. Webkit is a resounding success considering the first public release was 7 years ago and pretty dreadful.
- wdewind 16y ago
  I guess you ignored the part where I said except mobile obv. My biggest issue with webkit is that there was a perfectly fine rendering engine to begin with that both Safari and Chrome could've simply built a new UI around. Instead they gave us yet another OS to support. Web developers complain all the time about supporting multiple browsers, yet support web kit? And for the record, steam is a great example of what I'm talking about: completely mediocre rendering performance for really simple tasks (essentially a web browser). It's shocking how bad web content looks in steam, I'm kind of surprised you even brought it up. Yes - Webkit long term will be good, it can't not (even IE9 is looking alright at this point). Right now though (ruling out IE6), > 50% of my web dev cross browser issues are dealing with web kit, not IE7+, and for a much less significant audience (ie: expensive). So you're right, it's not a "fail," but I think how great the response is to it is really disproportional. I REALLY want to love chrome etc but I just can't - it's not ready yet.

starpilot 16y ago

The least they could do is have the q tag render with smart quotes. This is already handled in Firefox properly.

masklinn 16y ago
> The least they could do is have the q tag render with smart quotes Fuck no. I will decide on the fucking quotes I want around my quotes, unless you decide to cleanly and perfectly support all international quote style guides[0], you do not touch the content I create and you do not start changing my quotes. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotation_mark,_non-English_usage http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotation_mark,_non-English_usa...