Issue 138 proposed text

Currently, section 9.2.1.1 has this paragraph:

"When an inline box contains a block box, the inline box (and its
inline ancestors within the same line box) are broken around the
block. The line boxes before the break and after the break are
enclosed in anonymous boxes, and the block box becomes a sibling of
those anonymous boxes. When such an inline box is affected by relative
positioning, the relative positioning also affects the block box. "

Boris raised an issue about "the block box" in the last sentence being
ambiguous, and provided a test-case to illustrate interop differences
possibly caused by this ambiguity.

The interpretation suggested by fantasai, and supported by my own
reading and reasoning, is that the final sentence of that paragraph is
intended to mean that the entire contents of the inline element are
shifted as a block by relative positioning on the inline element, even
if the actual boxes are no longer box-children of the inline box
generated by the inline element.

I suggest changing the last sentence to instead read:

"When such an inline box is affected by relative positioning, the
relative positioning affects all the boxes that were originally
contained within the inline box, including the block box causing the
break."

I think this is sufficiently clear.

The behavior suggested by my interpretation and rewrite is the current
behavior of IE8 in all the test cases I've seen so far, and the
behavior of Gecko in at least some of the test cases.  Webkit and
Opera have a different behavior and will have to change.

~TJ

Received on Thursday, 3 June 2010 22:20:51 UTC