= Line Breaking in WebKit =

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#!div class="important" 
**WARNING:** This page contains forward looking statements, which should ''not yet'' be considered an accurate description of WebKit.
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== Line Breaking ==

[http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css3-text/ CSS3 Text] defines a set of rules governing [http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css3-text/#line-break-details default line breaking behavior], some of which is very specific, i.e., testable and repeatable among browsers, and some of which is generic, i.e., not standardized. An example of the former is that the non-tailorable line breaking classes defined by the Unicode Line Breaking Algorithm, Unicode Technical Report #14 [http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr14/ UAX14], must be honored; an example of the latter is that [http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css3-text/#soft-wrap-opportunity soft break opportunities] are not concretely defined.

=== The `line-break` property ===

In order to customize line breaking behavior, CSS3 Text intorduces the inheritable [http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css3-text/#line-break line-break] property, with the following standard values:

 * `auto`
 * `loose`
 * `normal`
 * `strict`

If not specified, the initial (default) value is `auto`.

=== The former `-webkit-line-break` property ===

For some time now, WebKit has supported a non-standard `-webkit-line-break` property, based on the earlier `-khtml-line-break` property, which accepted one of two values:

 * `normal` (default)
 * `after-white-space`

=== The new `-webkit-line-break` property ===

With the introduction of CSS3 Text features, and since its properties have not yet been designated non-prefixed by the CSS Working Group, it is necessary to merge the value space of the former `-webkit-line-break` property and the new `line-break` property into a newly defined `-webkit-line-break` property that accepts the following values:

 * `auto` (default)
 * `loose`
 * `normal`
 * `strict`
 * `after-white-space`

Note that this functional merger results in the value `auto` being returned as the default value instead of the former `normal` value.

=== Implementation Details ===

== References ==

 1. [=#css3text http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css3-text/]
 1. [=#uax14 http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr14/]
 1. [=#icu http://site.icu-project.org]
 1. [=#html5lang http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/global-attributes.html]