vertical padding on first-letter pseudo class /w gecko

[Jonathan N. Little]

Trying to understand the source of the vertical padding first-letter
pseudo class when floated to produce a drop cap. See demo page that I
have set up to illustrate the trouble.

http://www.littleworksstudio.com/temp/dropcap.html

Using the same code for a span element behaves differently and the
problem seems to occur with Gecko browsers. Most drop cap example on the
web use absolute dims in px and I wanted a flexible design that scaled
with the font. Demo page includes code, live example and screenshots,
the yellow background is the styled span and the red is the first-letter
pseudo class. What am I overlooking here?

 

[Jonathan N. Little]

Trying to understand the source of the vertical padding first-letter
pseudo class when floated to produce a drop cap. See demo page that I
have set up to illustrate the trouble.

http://www.littleworksstudio.com/temp/dropcap.html

Using the same code for a span element behaves differently and the
problem seems to occur with Gecko browsers. Most drop cap example on the
web use absolute dims in px and I wanted a flexible design that scaled
with the font. Demo page includes code, live example and screenshots,
the yellow background is the styled span and the red is the first-letter
pseudo class. What am I overlooking here?

Some more info, apparently the problem is that the UA’s differ on what
actually defines the character box. With Mozilla is the total charter
height including ascender and descender and the room above for accent
marks. IE only considers the space IF the character has such attributes.
And Opera just ignores the whole business...

http://www.littleworksstudio.com/temp/dropcap.html

I have update the page to show this. I am try to find in the spec which
interpretation of the glyph is correct.