Re: [CSS3] Content to appear twice

> [Original Message]
> From: Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch>
> To: Matthias P. Wuerfl <tri-tra@trullala.de>
>
>
> On Wed, 3 Dec 2003, Matthias P. Wuerfl wrote:

<snip>

> If you want to propose that content appears twice, yes, because we don't
> have a good answer. :-)
>
>
> > As far as i can focus on the problem as a not-programmer and a
> > just-web-author there are 3 possibilities:
> >
> > 1 showing one applet twice (or thrice) (the Browser could simply "copy"
> >    the "look" of the "area". Reaction on Input is shown thrice.)
>
> That is impossible to implement in common scenarios (e.g.  direct-to-
> video-RAM movie playback plugins).
>
>
> > 2 having the applet thrice on the page (just as if it was 3 times in the
> >    HTML-Source)
>
> That doesn't work in terms of the DOM.
>
>
> > 3 saying "this only works for ul, p, div,..." in the specs and waiting
> >    for ideas to appear later.
>
> So how should UAs implement it?
>
>
> >> It also seems odd from a DOM point of view -- what's the offsetTop of a
> >> <div> that is painted twice?
> >
> > My Idea was to have an "original" and a "copy". Of course those things
> > have to deal with the original. Sorry, but i don't know DOM good enough
> > to understand the problem.
>
> That is part of the problem. :-)
>
>
> >> Yeah, that can be a problem... you could include the header twice
> > [...]
> >> and define the header outside the markup.
> >
> > That's what i don't want to. Things like the Naviation belong to the
> > HTML-Code. This works with all UAs. Solutions that are not compatible
> > with former standards (or Web Culture) are not acceptable for me as
author.
>
> A fair point.
>
>
> I'll bear this in mind when working on the CSS3 Generated Content module.
> I agree that it would be beneficial to be able to do this. Maybe something
> like XBL could be used.

Duplication could be handled at the content level with XML Inclusion [1]
which will probably see implementation well before any CSS based
solution would see implementation, despite the fact that XML
Inclusion had to return to WD status from CR.

However, if you view the duplication as presentation instead of
content, then rightfully, CSS should handle it.  The main problem is
that given the current DOM, I believe that 'height' and 'width' can be
set only once.  This suggests that if duplication is handled via CSS,
the duplicates should be considered to be analogous to replaced
content and have an intrinsic size based on the size determined
for the original. This would require that the original have a size
to begin with, which suggests that CSS should not provide for
duplication of elements with a 'display-model' of "inline-inside".

I don't know the DOM well enough to know whether this would
solve  the problem either, but it does simplify it if duplication is
restricted to that of elements that have 'height' and 'width'.

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/xinclude/

Received on Monday, 29 December 2003 22:07:23 UTC