[CSSWG] Resolutions Beijing F2F 2007-09-10 Morning

Major topics for Monday morning included:
   Japanese Layout
   Vertical Text
   Margin Collapsing (CSS2.1)

Japanese Layout
---------------

   The W3C has a Japanese Layout Task Force, which is a joint effort
   of the I18n, XSL, SVG, and CSS working groups. Their current goal
   is to document layout requirements for Japanese documents so that
   W3C working groups can incorporate them into their respective
   technologies. Most meetings are face-to-face in Japan in Japanese,
   but there was a bilingual F2F last week in Tokyo, and fantasai was
   able to attend for the CSSWG and report back. The intention of the
   task force is to create a W3C Note in English. So far only Part I,
   which mostly covers page-level layout, has been written and
   translated. The task force plans to finish most of parts II and III
   by the November 2007 W3C Technical Plenary.

   The CSSWG resolved to create a parallel document that explains
   how CSS can or plans to accomplish each of the requirements in the
   JTF document and highlights places where CSS currently does not
   handle the requirements. This document will be started on the wiki,
   here: http://csswg.inkedblade.net/ideas/japanese-layout


Vertical Text
-------------

   RESOLVED That the shift direction (direction of superscripts wrt the
            baseline) in vertical text by default is left to right, i.e.
            consistent with the default orientation of Western scripts.


   RESOLVED That the breadth (e.g. line length) of an auto-height vertical
            block in horizontal flow shall be limited by default to the
            height of the viewport. This is accomplished by defining
            "max-height: none" to be equivalent to "max-height: 100vh"
            in this case. The analogous solution shall be applied to
            horizontal blocks in vertical flow.
   RATIONALE This preserves readability in the default case: the
            document can always be scrolled such that the lines fit
            within the viewport even though it may be a little awkward.
            The author can and should set more appropriate constraints.
            This follows the "DBaron Principle".
   COMMENTS It was noted that a particularly elegant way to handle such
            blocks would take advantage of the multi-col module. However
            that module has a problem in that it doesn't define behavior
            for blocks with a totally unconstrained "width" (which so far
            hasn't ever happened in CSS) and an auto "height" with a max
            constraint (i.e. the parent's available width).
            See http://csswg.inkedblade.net/spec/css-multicol#issue-1

The DBaron Principle: If the most important cases are handled by a
   reasonable specification, then the remaining edge cases can be
   treated by a simple rule that everyone agrees to implement
   interoperably, even if that rule is not ideal in all cases.


Margin Collapsing
-----------------

   TENTATIVE RESOLUTION: In CSS2.1 section 8.3.1 bullet 6 subbullet 2,
            change “non-zero top border” to “non-zero bottom border”.
   PENDING Hixie's ok.
   SEE http://csswg.inkedblade.net/spec/css2.1#issue-6

~fantasai

Received on Thursday, 13 September 2007 06:48:04 UTC