Re: [css3-multicol] column overflow

On Sat, Oct 18, 2008 at 11:41 AM, Håkon Wium Lie <howcome@opera.com> wrote:

> Also sprach Robert O'Callahan:
>
>  > > How would it solve the problem at hand, though, if it only has an
>  > > effect when scrollbars would otherwise appear. The multicol elements
>  > > I'm trying to change don't have scrollbars in the block direction.
>  >
>  >
>  > Like so:
>  > div {
>  >   column-width: 20em;
>  >   max-height: 200px; /* or 100%, or whatever */
>  >   overflow: auto;
>  >   overflow-mode: paginate;
>  > }
>
> I still don't quite understand. The code above seems to make the
> multicol element (div) paged while the rest of the document is
> continous. So, users would have a scrollable canvas with a 200px (or
> whatever) high rectangle that uses a paged mode inside it?


Yes.

To me it makes sense to have a "overflow-mode: paginate" (or whatever)
> on the root element, but not to combine the two models in the same
> document. If we had "overflow-mode: paginate", we wouldn't need to
> constrain the height of the element -- it should automatically be
> constrained by the viewport.


True, applying this feature to the viewport would solve a lot of use cases,
but it would also be useful for interior elements. For example you might
have content like a header or sidebar or framing UI that is always visible
with another element containing the "body text" which is paginated. Or you
might have a help pane that displays paginated.

The implementation shouldn't be any harder to allow it for arbitrary
elements, so I see no reason to restrict it to the viewport.

Adding 'paginate' to overflow-style sounds great. However one issue which
occurred to me is that even if the content is paginated, a single "pagelet"
can still overflow in the block progression direction, so authors might want
to control the visibility of the block progression direction scrollbar even
in paginated mode.

Rob
-- 
"He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are
healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his
own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all." [Isaiah
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