Re: float:center

fantasai wrote:

> I think it's more reasonable to define behavior so that the text in a 
> single column
> either flows on one side, or on the other side. If the float is 
> positioned to span
> columns, then it makes sense for text to wrap around both sides.

Floating exactly halfway between two columns is certainly done in 
traditional typography, but it means that float centre can only be used 
in combination with columns.  I assumed that the people proposing it 
wanted it to work anywhere that other floats worked, which would include 
single column material.

Whilst I don't know how normal floats current interact with columns, I 
would have expected them to be relative to the column, not to the 
container of the whole set of columns, but a concept of a float between 
columns tends to imply it is relative to the whole container.

One problem with floating between columns, is that, in the real world 
examples I've seen, the float doesn't really belong to either of them, 
so it requires violation of separation of content from styling, as the 
content of the float would need to be placed in the actual text in a 
position that was unrelated to what was in the text at that position. 
Typically, in traditional media, they are unrelated to paragraph 
boundaries, so would have to be inserted as span's.

Handling this cleanly requires one of the more sophisticated schemes 
that have been suggested, in which the display is positioned on the 
media to a greater or lesser extent separately from its place in the 
content.  In some cases, I think that the logically correct place would 
be as generated content against the article level DIV.  Even when 
included in the content, traditional use of pull out quotes requires 
them to be before or after the text of the article, when one linearizes 
the page, as they are not generally used as sub-headings, but rather as 
a separated, summary, stream, interleaved with the main text.

I am assuming here, that:

- use cases;
- separation of content from styling;
- linearization of the basic text,

are all still considered important requirements for CSS.  I haven't 
addressed layout fluidity here.



-- 
David Woolley
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Received on Saturday, 5 January 2008 10:59:05 UTC