[whatwg] Adding descent to TextMetrics

[Charles Pritchard]

On 8/10/2010 5:22 PM, Charles Pritchard wrote:
> On Aug 10, 2010, at 4:09 PM, Ian Hickson<ian at hixie.ch>  wrote:
>> Adding more features to TextMetrics is on the cards for a future version
>> of the canvas API, but at the moment I'm waiting until more of the spec is
>> reliably implemented before adding more features, so that we don't get too
>> far ahead of the spec.
> We're fine simply including a table of descent metrics (they're essentially a single static value for each font).
>
> Exposing the metric value is a very simple process for implementors (low cost in time to implementation).
>
> I understand that the Canvas spec is essentially frozen (though this seems like a deficiency in the standard [why have textBaseline without it?]) -- I'd like to see some place to discuss the  future standard, so as to avoid x-vend-descent as the property value.

I don't feel that this particular proposal was judged at all on merit, 
feasibility, nor costs.

The response was canned, and could have applied to any general class of 
proposals.

We've found some tricks using div, an inline block, and various css to 
get values close-enough-to-accurate, for the TextMetrics baseline.
I wouldn't recommend it as standard practice, it's a workaround.

Please consider addressing the defect I lodged, relating to textBaseline 
and TextMetrics, on its own terms.

-Charles