177496 - <em> text surrounded by italic text is not rendered in roman

Status: NEW

(Core :: CSS Parsing and Computation, enhancement, P4)

Description

[Tony Finch]

Usual typographical rules dictate that emphasis inside a block of italic text is
indicated by setting the emphasized text in roman. Mozilla doesn't do this, for
example in <address> sections.

<address>
Italic text.
<em>This should be roman.</em>
Italic again.
</address>

I don't know whether there are similar problems with CSS.

Comment 1

[David Baron :dbaron: (⌚️UTC-4, no longer working on Mozilla)]

This is only really a valid bug for EM since it's the only thing that's normally
italic but not required to be.  It could also be valid for STRONG.

However, it requires some proposed features of CSS that don't exist yet.

Comment 2

[Eric A. Meyer (dead account)]

What is it that CSS doesn't have that's needed?  It seems to me we could simply
write a rule to the effect of:

  address em {font-style: normal;}

Perhaps better, the author/user can do this.  Or are you saying that CSS offers
no way to write a generic "if X is surrounded by italic text, make sure it's
non-italic" rule?

Comment 3

[David Baron :dbaron: (⌚️UTC-4, no longer working on Mozilla)]

The latter. :-)

Comment 4

[Anne (:annevk)]

I think this should be closed... :)

Comment 5

[Anne (:annevk)]

Resolving WONTFIX. There seems to be no need for this and authors are perfectly
capable of doing such things themselves.

Comment 6

[David Baron :dbaron: (⌚️UTC-4, no longer working on Mozilla)]

This is definitely not wontfix, and should eventually be fixed.

Comment 7

[David Baron :dbaron: (⌚️UTC-4, no longer working on Mozilla)]

Bug 363250 is the way to fix this.