Re: [CSS3-MultiCol] suggestions for vertical text

Grant, Melinda wrote:
>  
> fantasai said:
>> This case wouldn't be triggered except when vertical and 
>> horizontal text modes are mixed. The layout *has* to change 
>> when it's printed to avoid splitting individual lines of text 
>> across the page break. Either we leave a big gap at the 
>> bottom of the page so that the column can shift to the next 
>> page, or we adjust the column widths so that the page is 
>> filled. If the layout engine can paginate content into 
>> different- sized columns, I don't see a good reason for us to 
>> require a large gap.
> 
> We should ensure the author has tools to control this behavior, as
> neither approach will be best in all situations.

I think that might have to go into the next level. Putting it in
this level means implementors have to implement both behaviors.

>> (Note that the columns in my ascii diagrams were vertical 
>> text in horizontal columns. I suppose I didn't make that clear.)
> 
> But the concept applies equally to horizontal text formatted in columns
> and printed in a landscape orientation.

Not really. If the whole document is horizontal or the whole document
is vertical, we don't have this problem: the column element paginates
into multiple sets of columns. Håkon's algorithms will handle these
cases just fine. Landscape orientation just means the width of the
layout flow is wider and the pages are shorter. The columns paginate
the same way: fill down to the bottom of the page, start at the top
of the next column, and continue until we run out of room. Then do
the same thing on the next page, starting at the top.

It's cases where we are paginating over flow in the "horizontal"
direction that we run into a problem. A similar case for horizontal
text is if we set (on an English document)

   :root {
     columns: 15em;
     height: 100%;
     width: infinite;
   }

which doesn't fit columns to the size of the containing block (the page)
and causes overflow off the the right side of the page if the text is
long enough. Paginating that is a slightly different problem.

Paul had a handful of very nice diagrams for the way columns work in
vertical text. Maybe he can forward them to www-archive@w3.org and
post the archive link here so we can all look. :) I'm not sure if they
cover this specific case, but even so I'm sure they'll help.

~fantasai

Received on Wednesday, 14 November 2007 21:19:09 UTC