- From: Eric Meyer <emeyer@theopalgroup.com>
- Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2001 16:19:14 -0500
- To: www-style@w3.org
Whee doggies, this has been quite the conversation. I'll see if I can't subtract from it. Consider an empty table cell (e.g., <td></td>). Very few of us would argue that it contains a line box, any more than we would argue that an empty block-level element (e.g., <div></div>) contains a line box-- or, indeed, anything else. Unfortunately, images are by default inline elements, and so (in my view) create a inline box when they appear, and therefore either contribute to a line box, or create one to enclose their inline box. The fact that there isn't any actual text in the line is irrelevant, at least from the specification's point of view. We humans may find this annoying, but that only means that we must either alter the specification, or get used to the annoyance. If you set an image to 'display: block', it becomes a block-level element and this whole messy inline formatting thing goes away, to be replaced by a different set of messy stuff. It also happens that all this is a problem because inline images are, by default, defined to align their bottom edge with the baseline of the line box in which they appear. If they were defined to align by default to the bottom of the line box, then we wouldn't have this problem. (Thus the solution using 'vertical-align: bottom;'.) So: how about asking implementors to include a UA style which states something along the lines of: td > img, th > img {vertical-align: bottom;} Would that be terribly inappropriate? It covers the situation we have here, and while one could argue that authors ought to be doing this, perhaps this is one area where we could just not bother them. This also keeps implementors from having to do things like special-case table cells to treat 'line-height: normal' as 'line-height: 0', which strikes me as technically valid but also a horrible twisting of the specification's intent. And yes, I do care about intent, or else I wouldn't be trying to fix this at all. If this solution offends, consider allowing it in bugwards-compatible mode and not in strict mode and see if you're quite so offended. If so, then let's hear why. -- Eric Meyer Internet Applications Manager e-mail: emeyer@theopalgroup.com The OPAL Group / Technical Services voice: (216) 986-0710 ext. 21 http://www.theopalgroup.com/ fax: (216) 986-0714
Received on Friday, 30 March 2001 16:19:54 UTC