CSS Working Group agrees to add a whole lotta Math

Dave Crossland
Dave Crossland Posts: 1,504
in Font Technology


"The CSS Working Group agreed this morning on adding many math functions. We now have:

• calc()
• min()
• max()
• clamp()
• sin()
• cos()
• tan()
• acos()
• asin()
• atan()
• atan2()
• hypot()
• sqrt()
• pow()

The face of CSS is rapidly changing."

This is big news for doing flexible typography with variable fonts :)
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Comments

  • John Hudson
    John Hudson Posts: 3,500
    I can appreciate that this is big news, but as someone who doesn't know a lot of math, I'd be interested in examples of what some of these functions can do, specifically in how they relate to typography.
  • James Puckett
    James Puckett Posts: 2,023
    IIRC those are the labels on the buttons of that expensive calendar my parents had to buy me in high school.
  • John Savard
    John Savard Posts: 1,188
    James Puckett said:
    IIRC those are the labels on the buttons of that expensive calendar my parents had to buy me in high school.
    Yes, they're providing what are known as the "Elementary Transcendental Functions", sin, cos, tan, log, exp, as well as the lesser algebraic functions like square root. The sort of thing expected to see in computer languages.

    But I'm having a hard time seeing how these relate to typography, although I suppose they could be useful, for example, in having text flow around a circular illustration.

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