12.6.11. Character Flow Object Class

A character flow object is atomic. Flow objects of this class can only be inlined. Flow objects of this class have the following characteristics:

A character flow object is formatted to produce a single inline area. This may be merged with adjacent inline areas if the ligature?: property is true. The position point of the inline area is the position point property of the glyph specified in the font resource for the specified writing-mode. The escapement direction is the direction between the position point and escapement points as specified in the font resource for the specified writing-mode. The size of the area in the escapement direction is the distance between the position and escapement points. The size of the area before and after the placement path in the line-progression direction is the smallest that will enclose the extent of the glyph in those directions as specified in the font resource for the specified writing-mode. If the nominal alignment mode of the font resource for the character flow object's writing-mode is not the same as the paragraph's alignment mode, then the glyph area is automatically adjusted as specified by the alignment mode property in the font resource for the specified writing-mode.

12.6.11.1. Character Properties

Character properties are used to determine the default values of certain non-inherited characteristics of character flow objects. In addition, character properties are accessible with the char-property procedure. The properties of a character do not affect how the flow objects are formatted. They are only used during the construction of the flow object tree and may affect how the flow object tree is constructed.

NOTE 84: Character properties should not be confused with properties of nodes of class data-char.

The following character properties are pre-defined for the style language:

NOTE 89: This set of character properties is not exhaustive. Additional properties may be added using an added-char-properties-declaration.