1211018 - [rfe] Reader should use hyphenation by default

Status: NEW

(Toolkit :: Reader Mode, enhancement, P5)

Description

[Christian Stadelmann]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:38.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/38.0
Build ID: 20150922120153

Steps to reproduce:

Visit any web site, open the reader mode


Actual results:

No hyphenation present, but text is ragged


Expected results:

Text should be hyphenated (is that correct English?)

In other words: in about:reader the CSS property `-moz-hyphens` (later to become `hyphens`) should be set to `auto`. Furthermore the reader view must preserve the language specifier from the original website, e.g. lang="de"

Comment 1

[:Gijs (he/him)]

(In reply to Christian Stadelmann from comment #0)
> Furthermore the reader view must
> preserve the language specifier from the original website, e.g. lang="de"

There quite often isn't any. We'd need to infer the language using cld or some other library.

Comment 2

[sonali18317]

:Gijs, I fixed the issue. I am having some network issues, would submit a patch by tomorrow.

Comment 3

[:Gijs (he/him)]

This should get UX approval. Given we wontfixed bug 1497056 (using justified text) as a result of a UX decision, I'm actually not sure if we want hyphenation, either. Bryan/Abraham, can you comment?

Comment 4

[Abraham Wallin]

Gijs, can you elaborate on the hyphenation issue? It's not clear to me what the underlying problem is?

Comment 5

[:Gijs (he/him)]

(In reply to Abraham Wallin from comment #4)

Gijs, can you elaborate on the hyphenation issue? It's not clear to me what the underlying problem is?

Well, my initial question is whether we want automated hyphenation in reader mode. I'm asking because previously, people suggested using justified text instead of left-aligned text, in bug 1497056, and the UX team said that we shouldn't make that change. I imagine similar objections might apply to hyphenation. I could be wrong, but I wanted to check before people spend time adding this only to then find out that it's not desired.

I'll note that this would be automated hyphenation on top of whatever content the original website provided. It might not be perfect - I don't know for what languages we ship hyphenation dictionaries these days, our language detection likely isn't perfect, and we don't currently preserve language information from the original document (see bug 1474565).

Comment 6

[Abraham Wallin]

Ah, I think understand. The question is if we should auto-hyphenate instead of leaving the text left aligned and ragged?

In that case I'd say no. The standard display of text on the web (and in many other places) is left justified with ragged edges. But, I'd leave it up to Bryan Bell as he's more familiar with Firefox conversions and user expectations/requests.

Comment 7

[:Gijs (he/him)]

(In reply to Abraham Wallin from comment #6)

Ah, I think understand. The question is if we should auto-hyphenate instead of leaving the text left aligned and ragged?

We can still have left-aligned + ragged text, but it'll also have hyphenation applied (hyphenation doesn't require justification, AFAIK).

In that case I'd say no. The standard display of text on the web (and in many other places) is left justified with ragged edges. But, I'd leave it up to Bryan Bell as he's more familiar with Firefox conversions and user expectations/requests.

OK, let's wait to see what Bryan says.

Comment 8

[Christian Stadelmann]

(In reply to :Gijs (he/him) from comment #7)

We can still have left-aligned + ragged text, but it'll also have hyphenation applied (hyphenation doesn't require justification, AFAIK).

Exactly, that's what I would like to see too.

(In reply to Abraham Wallin from comment #6)

The standard display of text on the web (and in many other places) is left justified with ragged edges. But, I'd leave it up to Bryan Bell as he's more familiar with Firefox conversions and user expectations/requests.

On the other hand, the standard display of text is often full of ads and other stuff which makes reading harder. The reader mode is there for making reading easier and hyphenation plays an role in making long text easier to read – importance is depending on the language of course.

Comment 9

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

Clear a needinfo that is pending on an inactive user.

Inactive users most likely will not respond; if the missing information is essential and cannot be collected another way, the bug maybe should be closed as INCOMPLETE.

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