Re: [CSS21] properties for table-column (In HTML: COL) & table-column-group (In HTML: COLGROUP) items.

On 6/29/05, Laurens Holst <lholst@students.cs.uu.nl> wrote:
> Orion Adrian wrote:
> 
> >I'd like to see the [...] float [...] properties taken out.
> >
> Please no! Floats are very good at what they're for, and they were never
> intended for layout in the first place.
> 
> >But like every idea I put before the group, it will be ignored as it's
> >better to sit with what we have then try to rethink the current
> >solution. Oh well.
> >
> >
> ...
> 
> As I understand the CSS WG has likely heard solutions like this being
> proposed many times, so in order not to have the same discussion again
> every couple of months they just don't have it at all.
> 
> Anyways, if you want to propose a good solution, you must consider
> things like how it will affect incremental rendering (a fundamental part
> of CSS), etc... The independence of document order in this thing you
> propose for example will make it not be incrementally renderable,
> causing browsers performing very poorly when incrementally rendering
> your webpage while loading because it needs to reflow all the time, or
> just not rendering it at all until it's fully loaded. Without
> independence of document order, it seems to be just like the table
> display properties.

Except it is incrementally renderable if the document was written in
display order. It doesn't require reflow ever since it looks at the
size of the viewport and not the size of the container. While what
I've presented isn't laid out in the most descriptive way, the idea
behind it was solid. It's something I've been thinking about off and
on for months.
 
> I'm getting a bit tired of the 'the CSS WG is blind to solutions' or
> 'everything is fundamentally flawd'-like comments. That's not a
> constructive way to work. There are technical reasons behind the limits
> of CSS which can't just be waved away.

I find that when people no longer want to work around the limits of a
language, the core properties of that language may need to be
rethought. There are multiple ways to accomplish the same task.

I'm not saying, nor have I ever said that everything was fundamentally
flawed. Frankly I'm quite happy with 90% of the language, but the
layout properties kill me. They also apparently cause other people
some concern since the issues appear here every couple of weeks (in
the form of calc, float, %%).

I find the CSS working group's lack of solutions to problems presented
consistently to be frustrating.

Orion Adrian

Received on Wednesday, 29 June 2005 13:28:07 UTC