[whatwg] Font metrics

[Ian Hickson]

On Fri, 2 Apr 2010, Greg Brown wrote:
> 
> In reviewing the current draft API for the <canvas> element 
> (http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/the-canvas-element.html), 
> I noticed that there is no support for obtaining font metrics such as 
> ascent, descent, leading, and bounding box. It seems like the most 
> recent discussion regarding font metrics took place a couple of years 
> ago:
> 
> http://lists.whatwg.org/htdig.cgi/whatwg-whatwg.org/2008-May/014706.html
> 
> But even that thread refers to discussions from 2006.
> 
> I would personally like to see support for these values added to the 
> API. Is this something that could be considered for the final spec? What 
> are the major obstacles to providing such support? I would think that 
> this information could be easily obtained using the underlying graphics 
> API, but maybe I am missing something.

It's something we'll probably add in due course, but for now we're waiting 
for the existing canvas API stuff to be implemented properly. We can't add 
too much stuff at once, because if we do the browser vendors get so far 
behind that they end up either rushing to catch up (leading to more bugs), 
or skipping parts in order to get the rest done right (leading to parts of 
the spec being ignored).

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'