- From: Tab Atkins Jr. <jackalmage@gmail.com>
- Date: Fri, 20 Mar 2009 11:55:54 -0500
- To: Brad Kemper <brad.kemper@gmail.com>
- Cc: David Hyatt <hyatt@apple.com>, Jonathan Snook <jonathan.snook@gmail.com>, "www-style@w3.org" <www-style@w3.org>
On Fri, Mar 20, 2009 at 11:47 AM, Brad Kemper <brad.kemper@gmail.com> wrote: > > On Mar 19, 2009, at 12:39 PM, David Hyatt wrote: > >>> No. We don't flow contents *into* cells. We *absolutely position* >>> contents to align with edges of particular cells. >>> >> >> Three kinds of positioning: >> >> (1) table-position on a display:table-cell. The object actually becomes >> the cell at that position. A pseudo-element can't refer to this cell >> position when this is done. >> (2) table-position on a normal flow object like a block. The object is >> placed *into* the cell at that position. If no cell exists at that >> position, then an anonymous one gets made. A pseudo element can be used to >> style this cell. >> (3) position:absolute with grid units. Provides out of flow alignment to >> cells in tables. > > Please note that I am not totally against #2, above. Just somewhat against > it, because I think it confuses the understanding of the rest of it, > complicates things that would otherwise be simpler (the automatic wrapping > of cells into new rows), and is unnecessary for the goals of source-order > independence. I think if you had #1 above, plus row-spans/col-spans, it > would satisfy the vast majority of layout needs, and also be a great boon to > creating table-like structures out of non-table HTML structures (like > definition lists, or headline/paragraph combinations). > > #3 is a "nice-to-have" for abs-pos items to align with table-display-based > layouts. #2 just seems extraneous. Is it so that you can put a group of > things, like paragraphs, into a cell without actually having a wrapper of > some sort (like <DIV class="article">) around them first? Yes, exactly. Without #2, you have to explicitly add wrappers to your HTML, and you have to *change* those wrappers if you want to alter the layout significantly. The first part is unpalatable and should be avoided if possible, and the second is simply ridiculous for a layout manager. As an author, it would be a significant impediment if I didn't have #2. I could get around it by manually altering my source, as previous noted, but that shouldn't be necessary. ~TJ
Received on Friday, 20 March 2009 16:56:30 UTC