Text highlighting in html5

Question

I am trying to write a telugu text using uni codes so that I can highlight the text by changing into multiple colours according to sound. for that I am using html5 and js

<div  class="pa">&#3114;</div>
<div  class="paa">&#3114;&#3134;</div>

by using

$("#paa").animate({ color: "blue" }, 500); 

I can change the entire colour of the letter but now I want to highlight some part of that letter . Please suggest how it can be done.???

Answer 1

there is a few css tricks to fake the background-clip:text; or something alike SVG.

span {
  position:relative;
  color:green;
}
span:before {
  position:absolute;
  top:0;
  left:0;
  overflow:hidden;
  content:attr(data-text);
  color:blue;
  height:0.7em;
  overflow:hidden;
  animation: txtclr 4s infinite;
}
p {
  background:yellow;
  color:rgba(128, 0, 128 , 0.5);
  font-size:2em;
  font-weight:bold;
  background:linear-gradient(to bottom,lightgray 50%,yellow 50%);
  display:table;/* demo purpose to shrink to text size*/
  box-shadow:inset -3em 0 rgba(100,100,100,0.5);
  
}
@keyframes txtclr {
  0% {
    height:50%;
  }
  25%,75%{
    height:0;
    width:0;
  }
  50%{
    height:100%;
  }
}

<p><span data-text="my text">my text</span> and some other text </p>

run code snippet and see green text filling with blue from top to bottom.

no prefix added, later browser do not need it :)

Answer 2

It is feasible, but not easy with all languages. In the following example, I colored accents on certain letters. http://jsfiddle.net/07hh3z2n/5/

The hint is to use a CSS to get an inline-block with no width.

.phantom {
    display: inline-block;
    color: red;
    width: 0;
    overflow: visible;
}

If the part of the letter you want to highlight is an existing unicode char, this will work fine. Otherwise, you can try to use (or create) a special font with the parts of letters to highlight.