Re: flowing around both sides of a float

On Jan 1, 2008, at 2:50 PM, David Woolley wrote:

>
> Brad Kemper wrote:
>
>> 2. float:center is what I said is pretty clear. It would work just  
>> like float:left and float:right in most regards, which would  
>> continue to work as they do now. Item would move to center, and  
>> text (and other inline content) would flow around it in the  
>> direction of the text. The flow of text would stop at the item and  
>> then continue on the other side.
>
> That isn't actually obvious.  I am pretty sure that have seen  
> displays (which I seem to remember is the older term for the lower  
> level primitive of a block that is taken out of line, but with main  
> stream text flowed around it) with the format treated as having two  
> columns around the display, rather than having each line  
> individually split.

For columns, we have multi-column layout on the parent block. So, I  
would have float:center behave a bit differently from the other  
floats when the parent block has columns, so that it is centered  
within the whole block, instead of within one column of the block. If  
it bisects a gutter, then one column flows to the left of it, and  
another to the right.

Maybe we need another attribute to determine if the item that any  
float uses as its parent object is the column or is the element that  
was divided into columns. Something like scope:  [ column-box |  
content-box ]. That would be useful for left and right floats too,  
since "column-span" seems to have been removed from the working draft.

> Splitting lines works for reasonably narrow columns with even  
> narrower displays, but becomes difficult to read if the display is  
> reasonably wide, because one has to match up the correct line on  
> the other side. If one had to choose one option, I would go for the  
> additional column option, rather than the split line one.

I think we should be using multi-column layout when we want columns.  
I also think we should not proscribe the use of an value based on  
whether or not we think it is good design. Leave it to the designer  
to decide if the container is too narrow or the floating element too  
wide, as we do now with other floats.

> < clipped part where David implies we should limit standards to  
> designs he is familiar with >