[csswg-drafts] [css-fonts] generic font families may vs should map to multiple concrete font families (#5053)

frivoal has just created a new issue for https://github.com/w3c/csswg-drafts:

== [css-fonts] generic font families may vs should map to multiple concrete font families ==
This issue is partly relevant for existing generic font families, but I think gets more pressing if we decide we're going to add more.

[css-fonts-4](https://drafts.csswg.org/css-fonts-4/#generic-font-families) says:
> However, a single generic font family may be a composite face combining different typefaces based on such things as the Unicode range of the character …

I like that this is a possibility, but I think in some cases it ought to stronger than a "may", and probably a "should", for generic font families that are meant to be international.

For instance, it doesn't seem particularly important that fangsong, or a possible other language / script specific additions like nastaliq.

However, for generic font families that are meaningful across multiple scripts (sans serif, rounded…), then I think it *should* be a composite face trying to cover a broad range of Unicode. 

It feels like be able to make that distinction, we'd have to classify generics into "general-purpose generics" and "script-specific generics". That doesn't seem particularly hard at the moment, but with a bigger set, we might get into gray areas.

Please view or discuss this issue at https://github.com/w3c/csswg-drafts/issues/5053 using your GitHub account

Received on Friday, 8 May 2020 07:47:14 UTC