4 ms·
Tabular numerals are such a valuable feature. It's a bummer they're not more prevalent.
by airstrike 2y ago
Tabular numerals are such a valuable feature. It's a bummer they're not more prevalent.
- adrian_b 2y agoTabular numerals are very useful in certain cases, but I find even more useful the old-style numerals. By default, I always use old-style numerals, because they are much easier to read, especially for big numbers, for the same reason why the lowercase letters are easier to read, by having ascenders and descenders that break the uniformity of the characters. I use lining numerals only in the same places where I would use uppercase letters, e.g. in titles or when a sentence begins with a number.
- fsckboy 2y ago>I find even more useful the old-style numerals A font of antiquated faſhion doth boaſt moſt excellent and ſubſtantious qualities, yet prithee, what of olde ſtyle figures doſt thou deem hath benefit that I, in mine own diſcretion, might chooſeth?
- nativeit 2y agoYou must be Welsh!
- nine_k 2y agoSet thy eyes on this excellent Font, for Inſtance: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_(typeface)#/media/File%3AGeorgiaSpecimenAIB.svg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_(typeface)#/media/Fi... As can be moſt clearly ſeen, the Numerals are not of equale Height, but poſſeſs Deſcendants, like the 4, and Aſcendants, like the 6. Shouldſt thou deſire to embelliſh thy Layout with ſuch a Rendition of Numerals, thou canst: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/font-variant-numeric https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/font-varian... This Feature requireth though that the Font ſo employed containéd the proper Variants of the numeral Glyphs. Many a diſtinguished Font do. (Pray note that the -th Ending of Verbs is for Singular Third Perſon Form, not to be uſed with "thou". I do, thou dost, he doth.)
- o11c 2y agoAny font without tabular numbers is buggy, because it can't support U+2007 FIGURE SPACE  
- erik_seaberg 2y agoAlso U+2012 FIGURE DASH (for things like phone numbers), and probably U+2212 MINUS SIGN (aligned with plus). Everyone usually defaults to hyphen-minus though, and all bets are off.
- twic 2y agoI like tabular numerals. But you really need a small set of other glyphs to be tabular to really make them work. In particular, you need the plus and minus signs to be the same width, so that in a table like: gold +1.2% oil -6.4% corn +5.2% everything lines up and looks nice. At the moment, with CSS, there's no way to make that happen, and in normal typefaces the hyphen-minus is too narrow. You can replace the minus signs with a wider dash, but that is semantically wrong and also a pain in the arse. It occurs to me that contextual alternates could make this Just Work. I haven't used any typefaces expensive enough to do that though!
- LegionMammal978 2y agoI suppose one way to make it work in CSS would be to split the numbers on the decimal points, and align the parts as necessary. Though there's no way to get around the <td>/<span> soup, unfortunately.
- Suppafly 2y ago>you need the plus and minus signs to be the same width I've never thought about it, but that is somewhat annoying that the math symbols aren't a consistent width with each other.
- inferiorhuman 2y agochuckle Now throw in inline vs block equations into the mix.
- idoubtit 2y ago> the hyphen-minus is too narrow. You can replace the minus signs with a wider dash, but that is semantically wrong and also a pain in the arse. In this case, an alternative to "-", U+002D HYPHEN-MINUS, is "−", U+2212 MINUS SIGN. On Linux, I considered mapping the keypad substract key to it, but instead I configured a xcompose alias. gold +1.2% oil −6.4% corn +5.2%
- aikinai 2y ago
- mjcohen 2y agoBookman Old Style (my favorite font) seems to do this.
- bobbylarrybobby 2y agoPretty sure most browsers render <ol><li> with tabular nums if available.