- From: Anton Prowse <prowse@moonhenge.net>
- Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2012 00:56:34 +0200
- To: www-style@w3.org
- CC: Boris Zbarsky <bzbarsky@MIT.EDU>
On 10/10/2012 00:05, Boris Zbarsky wrote: > There's an unfortunate tendency to use the term "containing block" to > refer interchangeably to "the rectangle defined as the containing block" > (which is not itself a block in any way; it's just a rectangle) and "the > element which was used when defining the containing block" (assuming > there was one at all; see initial containing block) and maybe a few > other things. > > As defined, right now, the containing block is a rectangle. The other > uses are just confused, to a greater or lesser extent. Yup. Various people have raised these confused uses in CSS21 over the years. When I last looked through (in response to a detailed post by Peter Moulder, IIRC) I got the distinct impression that the containing block used to refer to a real block (box) in times gone by... but then, I imagine, the definition got repeatedly tweaked to account for eg abspos, and suddenly the containing block became a mere rectangle and various bits of existing spec text became out-of-kilter (not to mention that the term itself became seriously misleading). No post-CSS21 spec should be using the term to mean anything other than a rectangle, though (modulo the pending issue about containing blocks established by a principal inline box that's split across multiple lines). Cheers, Anton Prowse http://dev.moonhenge.net
Received on Tuesday, 9 October 2012 22:57:18 UTC