487348 - XUL <label> ignores CSS letter-spacing

Status: NEW

(Core :: XUL, defect)

Description

[Justin Dolske [:Dolske]]

Attachment: Testcase

Setting letter-spacing on a XUL label doesn't seem to have any effect. Works for a <description>, though.

In this simple testcase, the 1st pair of lines (using <label>) look the same (tested both OS X and Linux). The 2nd and 3rd pairs of lines (using <description> and <html:div>) correctly look different.

Comment 1

[Mats Palmgren (inactive)]

Attachment: Testcase #2

It's not a difference between label/description, but between specifying
the text in the 'value' attribute or as child text.

Comment 2

[Mats Palmgren (inactive)]

Maybe this is an optimization?  When using the 'value' attribute
you get a (simple) nsTextBoxFrame otherwise you get a nsBlockFrame
with one ore more child nsTextFrames:
http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/layout/base/nsCSSFrameConstructor.cpp#4223

Comment 3

[Neil Deakin (away until Sept 6)]

Yeah, the xul text frame doesn't use textruns, so it doesn't support things like letter-spacing and various things like that.

If you know you're not going to wrap lines and there aren't any issues in your case with using blocks inside boxes, you should just use <description>Text</description>.