Re: [css3-writing-modes] before/after terminology alternative?

On 10/04/2012 01:22 AM, "Martin J. Dürst" wrote:
> Just an additional datapoint in this discussion:
>
> I just noticed that CSS already has properties page-break-before and page-break-after (see
> http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS2/page.html#page-break-props). Rather obviously, these indicate the same directions as the -before and
> -after relative direction properties already in XSL-FO, but are orthogonal to the :before and :after pseudo-elements.
>
> These seem not to have caused any significant confusion up to now.

Because there is only one axis involved. Imho the main problem isn't
::before and ::after, but the fact that, given the set of terms

   start, before, end, after

it's not clear, without memorizing it beforehand, which set belongs
to which axis. I raised this particular issue years ago, but nobody
came up with a sensible alternative until this year. :/

I'll also note that there's an idea to extend break-before/break-after
to control inline breaking, in which case they would operate in the
start-end axis.

Imho before/after make the most sense as "in the DOM axis", whatever
that happens to be. This is consistent with break-before/break-after,
consistent with ::before/::after, and consistent with the way we talk
about the relationship of boxes and elements in the specs. That axis
is not always parallel to the block axis.

~fantasai

Received on Wednesday, 10 October 2012 16:53:55 UTC