Thanks for moving this discussion to its own issue, @fantasai.

For completeness, @Crissov's original comment was:

Iʼd like to approach this with non-existing keywords for the most common cases in mind. These sound reasonable to me:

{
text-initial: dropped; /* = 3 3 */
text-initial: sunken; /* = 3 2 */
text-initial: raised; /* = 3 1 */
...
} 

[Different property names suggestions for the other issue omitted here to focus on this issue.]

Would sunken also make sense if it computed to the first integer less one, floored at 1?

I like the idea of being able to say drop or rise using key words. I'd prefer to align it with syntax similar to how the span keyword works in CSS Grid. As in keyword value rather than value keyword.

We also should be able to set both at the same time.

[property-name]: drop 3 rise 2;

Or it could be done as functions instead?

[property-name]: drop(3) rise(2);

@AmeliaBR Not going to add keywords that compute to arbitrarily chosen constants like 3.

@Dan503 If we need sub-properties, we add sup-properties. Adding a complex syntax isn't really great, it was just unavoidable in Grid. :(

Proposal is to change the syntax of initial-letters from

initial-letters: <number> <integer>?

to

initial-letters: <number> [ drop | raise | <integer>]?

Where an omitted second argument is equal to drop which computes to the positive integer floor of <number>; and where raise computes to 1.

This is basically syntactic just sugar for what we have already.

Would it be possible to tweak that syntax so that drop 3 and raise 2 are valid values? (While still being unambiguous for parsing when there are two integers.)

If you wanted it to both raise by 2 lines and drop by 2 lines at the same time, how would you do that with the proposed syntax?

If you say "not possible", then you see the limitation in the proposed syntax.

Maybe this is a feature for the next level.

@Dan503 You'd need to use the two-number version that is currently in the spec. The first number is the size expansion factor, the second number (which must be an integer) is the line number at which it is aligned. I'm not sure exactly what you're picturing, but probably either 4 2 or 5 3 would do what you want.

See examples in the spec. E.g., this is 3 2 (Letters 3 lines high, baseline aligned with the second line of the paragraph):

Thanks @AmeliaBR that cleared things up :)

The CSS Working Group just discussed raise/drop keywords for initial-letters, and agreed to the following:

• RESOLVED: add drop and raise as keywords to initial-letters property
• RESOLVED: Order does not matter for the keyword in initial-letter property

A thought on @tantek's comment:

Larger point is list of numbers has been shown to be a usability problem

What about making it <number> at <integer>? E.g., that sunken capital would be initial-letters: 3 at 2, still meaning 3 lines high, aligned at line 2. Then it could be swapped unambiguously (although slightly less read-ably) as initial-letters: at 2 3.

Full syntax, with the short keywords, would be <number> || [at <integer> | drop | raise ]?

Downside is that the -webkit- value syntax would no longer be fully compatible.

@AmeliaBR I don't think that extending the syntax like that is an overall win, personally. :) We try not to introduce syntactic markers in property value syntaxes unless there's a syntactic ambiguity problem.

And one of the nice things about the simple two-value syntax is that it's easy to remember what happens to a missing second argument: it duplicates the first, just like most other places in CSS. The 'at' keyword doesn't create the same connection to the generic missing values rule.

Anyway, file a new issue if you feel strongly about it; closing this one out.