Re: [css3-gcpm] paged presentations, page floats, paged navigation between documents

Also sprach David Hyatt:

 > I think using overflow is one potential way to do this, but it
 > implies that your page size is fixed to the size of the overflow
 > box, and I'm worried that may be too limiting.

You can use the 'size' property and named pages to create pages of
different sizes. E.g., this code works in Prince:

  <html>
  <style>
  @page { size: a5; }
  @page big { size: a3; }
  </style>
  <body>
    On a small page
  <div style="page: big">
    On the big page
  </div>
  </html>

It can be useful to create inlays, maps and such in PDF files.
(Although, I often find it troublesome to open a PDF file with
different page sizes/orientations).

 > Just to follow up on this, another reason I think the page size
 > should be independent of the size of the box is that in iBooks
 > landscape mode we show two pages at once. Right now the fact that
 > we happen to use a multi-column strip allows us to just show two
 > "columns" since each "column" is in reality a page, but that just
 > totally falls apart for writing modes like vertical-rl (where the
 > column layout by default is in a vertical strip instead, but a 2-up
 > display still needs to be a horizontal strip).

The 'paged-x' concept seems to match your requirement; it lays pages out
in horizontal strips no matter what writing direction is used in the pages.

 > For a box you want to be able to define:
 > 
 > (1) Is the box paginating its child content?
 > (2) How are the pages placed inside the box (in case you show more than 
 > one or want to use coordinate math to move between them)?

I'd like for the CSS formatting model to answer these; I'd rather not
define another formatting model :)

 > (3) What is the actual page size (so that you show 2 pages at once
 > by making the page width half the width of the box).

There's nothing that prevent UAs from showing two pages at the same
time. For example, the PDF created by the HTML code above can be
viewed in 2-up mode by common PDF viewers. I'm not sure that "2-up"
should be expressed in CSS, though. Hmm. Do PDF files know about
2-ups? That is, does a PDF file know which two pages that together
form a spread?

 > (4) Shouldn't @page rules work with these pages? (I think it should.)

Probably. In the demo docuements I've written for Opera Reader, I've
been able to set space around pages by way of margin/padding on
the HTML/BODY elements. @page, with its margin boxes, offer a more
sophisticated model which is needed for paper publishing. And it will
probably be useful on screens as well.

-h&kon
              Håkon Wium Lie                          CTO °þe®ª
howcome@opera.com                  http://people.opera.com/howcome

Received on Wednesday, 12 October 2011 22:13:24 UTC