RE: interpretation of "auto" for block-level elements

> I don't know what you mean by "incremental _re-flow_", but
> imagine your box has
> the text alignment set to other than 'left', .....

Apologies, I understand what you mean now.  You are absolutely correct that
in order to begin flowing the contents of a block, you need to start out
with a certain width.  Of course it makes sense to initially translate
"auto" to the width/height of the containing block.  However, the exception
I am describing is what to do when the final content of the block is only on
one line. In these cases, it looks ugly to extend the size of the box to the
extents of it's container.  There should be some mechanism in CSS by which
the author can specify if one-line "auto" blocks snap to the size of their
content or the size of their containing block.

Just to re-state the importance of this, many applications require short
blocks of text, or other "non-replaced" elements, and wish to absolutely
position them and have the block size equal the size of their content.

- Joe

Received on Saturday, 4 March 2000 11:33:46 UTC