[css-inline] should initial-letter be plural?

[dauwhe]

It's possible (though rare) for initial-letter to apply to more than one letter. Should it be plural? Note this is shipping in WebKit as singular.

P.S. This is all my fault.

[frivoal]

Bah, I think it's fine as it is. ::first-letter can also contain some punctuation in addition to the letter, but nobody complains about its name. The purpose is clear from the current name, so I'd say it's good.

[fantasai]

@frivoal It's not about punctuations, which are indeed pretty incidental. It's about the fact that you can apply 'initial-letter' to entire words, and it's not at all obvious that this is possible.

If it wasn't shipping already, I'd push for renaming it. :/

[anjia]

Reference: certain inline-level boxes

... the initial-letter property applies not just to the CSS-defined ::first-letter pseudo-element, but also to inline-level boxes that are placed at the start of the first line.

When applying to inline-level boxes, initial-letter or initial-letters may be not a preferable property name.

Maybe the name initial-child or something else would be more suitable, because it's not only related to pure CSS, but also to the HTML structure. What do you think?

[dauwhe]

Maybe the name initial-child or something else would be more suitable, because it's not only related to pure CSS, but also to the HTML structure. What do you think?

This property exists to create properly-aligned larger letter(s) at the start of a block. In the typographic tradition they have always been called initial letters or drop caps; we chose the former as it covered more of the use cases. initial-child seems to describe what the property applies to, not what the property does. I think that term would be confusing for authors.

[litherum]

See also: #2809

[css-meeting-bot]

The Working Group just discussed should `initial-letter` be plural?, and agreed to the following:

• RESOLVED: change the initial-letter value to initial-letters

The full IRC log of that discussion

<dael> Topic: should `initial-letter` be plural?
<dael> github: https://github.com//issues/862
<myles> https://github.com//issues/2809
<dael> Rossen: As myles pointed out there's another related issue ^
<dael> Rossen: hyphenated-character
<dael> fantasai: Slightly different issues, I think, in sense that hypenated character is one character and if it's more than one unicode code point it's one thing from user prospective
<TabAtkins> (the word fantasai is searching for is "grapheme cluster")
<dael> fantasai: From author prospective it's a character from what I've heard of
<dael> Rossen: Let's do initial letter and then hypen
<dael> fantasai: initial-letter was originally plural and we decided to do that to make it clear that not only can you put multiple characters but also because it can apply to not just first-letter pseudo element but also the span which can have >1 char
<dael> fantasai: Intent to plural was to make it more clear you can do that
<florian> q+
<dael> fantasai: Reason it's an issue is b/c it's already shipping in WK
<dael> ??: prefixed
<dael> fantasai: It becomes an issue about compat if we're going to change name
<tantek> yes please keep it singular
<dael> dauwhe: This was an editing error in early spec stages. Prob 99% of use caes will be a single letter so I'm relatively agnostic.
<tantek> let's not design by edge-case
<dael> fantasai: I would change if even for single letter case it's a prop effecting multiple
<dael> fantasai: Problem is it's not just WK shipped, it's that doc written uses current name
<tantek> also consistent with :first-letter
<myles> initial-item?
<dael> fantasai: I don't think it's an edge case as that it's not as common in English. Dutch it's more common to have multiple. We have had requests for "what about first word" and youc an do that. That it says initial-letter guides people to assume you can't
<dael> dauwhe: You can educate people, though
<florian> q-
<tantek> agreed that it does sound like a selector
<dael> florian: From my pov I have slight preference for plural, but given slight compat I don't care strongly. I have another issue is that it desc what it applies to, not what it does. People keep thinking of this as a selector. In our last F2F there were questions making it seem like a selector. I don't have a good alternative, but I think this name is a problem b/c looks like selector
<dael> Rossen: Valid point. Do we have counter proposals? If we don't I would prefer to take that discussion back to github.
<dael> florian: it could be drop-cap but it also does initial. I don't know if there's a generic term for drop or raised cpas
<dael> fantasai: There isn't really which is how we ended up with initial-letter
<dael> florian: But I think that's the problem more then pluralization. I don't think single or plural matters enough
<dael> myles: Not sure how much compat is relelvent b/c prefix. But I think florian's point is right
<jensimmons> q+
<dael> Rossen: WE have options. Resolve the current issue and it seems most people lean not plural. Then we continue discussion here or separate as to if this is proper name.
<florian> Would "lettrine" work, or is that too obscure?
<dael> jensimmons: I like the idea of thinking about anthoer name. If we can't think of one I do like switching to plural. I don't think it's clear it would work on multi-letters. I don't think it's compat issue b/c not many people are using it.
<dael> fantasai: I don't think we have a web compat issue in terms of content. Do you think there's a lot of doc out there?
<gregwhitworth> +1 to what jensimmons - if we update MDN and caniuse we'll be good
<dael> jensimmons: No. I've been talking about it more then most in the industry. I think it would be easy enough when it ships for real to have a new round of education. The handful of docs could update or they're anchient.
<dael> fantasai: Then I lead toward make the change and then look for a less confusing word
<dael> fantasai: b/c even if members of WG are confused as to if it's a selector, we could hopefully do better.
<dael> dauwhe: I'm fine resolve for plural and hope for a new word
<tantek> how about take it github as Rossen suggested?
<dael> Rossen: Objections to change the initial-letter value to initial-letters?
<dael> RESOLVED: change the initial-letter value to initial-letters
<dael> Rossen: Rest can go to github and if there's a proposal we can go to WG
<dael> Rossen: myles still do hyphenated character now?
<dael> myles: still relevent

[jensimmons]

I just wrote a line of code in a Tweet and realized this might just be far more confusing.

p:first-letter { initial-letters: 5; }

Trying to keep track of initial-letters being plural and first-letter being singular is hard. Honestly first-letter is the property that should be plural (Time Machine time), and initial letter should be renamed to mean embiggen.

(Also I did drop it on Twitter to see what random words emerge: https://twitter.com/jensimmons/status/1022155415239450625)

[dauwhe]

See also #2950

[fantasai]

Do we need to revert this change?

[r12a]

My 2p: yes, we should revert it. Initial-letter is a concept; no need to get too pedantic about whether it's one letter or more, since you'd by rights need to concede that punctuation are not letters, too. But for me it's also significant that it's already implemented and socialised in the singular (which caused me a problem recently for setting up tests), and that there's the mismatch with :first-letter, that @jensimmons points out.

[jensimmons]

I would like us to revert this, and go back to a singular form — letter. The more I've lived with the plural form, the more problematic and awkward it feels.

[css-meeting-bot]

The CSS Working Group just discussed should `initial-letter` be plural?, and agreed to the following:

• RESOLVED: Rename initial-letters to initial-letter

The full IRC log of that discussion

<heycam> Topic: should `initial-letter` be plural?
<heycam> https://github.com//issues/862
<heycam> github: https://github.com//issues/862
<heycam> jensimmons: originally this property was defined as initial-letter, then debated that it should be plural, since it can apply to more than the first "letter"
<heycam> ... could apply to a group of letters, include punctuation
<heycam> ... we went down a road of whether this is the right name
<heycam> ... don't seem to come up with a better name
<heycam> ... but we did resolve to switch to initial-letters a while ago, I think July 2018
<heycam> ... then we've lived with that, writing spec and syntax using the plural version
<heycam> ... we're discussing today whether to go back to the singular
<heycam> ... for me, I wrote here in a comment that it's confusing
<heycam> ... first-letters will trip up authors
<heycam> ... I've not come up with a better name for initial-letter. as I've lived with it being plural, I've hated it. would like to revert it
<heycam> florian: ideally we'd have a verb of some kind, but can't come up with the right one
<heycam> ... the pluralization doesn't really help with anything
<heycam> ... I agree it would trip up people
<heycam> Rossen_: there's a linked issue with some better naming option discussion
<heycam> ... opening with "should it be drop-cap, initial-cap, ..."
<heycam> florian: that discussion didn't make any progress
<heycam> ... I agree we should revert to initial-letter
<fantasai> s/florian/fantasai/
<faceless2_> +1 to reverting this.
<heycam> Rossen_: not hearing other opposing opinions
<heycam> AmeliaBR: what's the state of implementations?
<heycam> myles: we support it without the s
<heycam> faceless2_: we have an s but we can drop it
<heycam> RESOLVED: Rename initial-letters to initial-letter