[CSS3 Backgrounds and Borders] Proposal for combining border-break and background-break

I see a number of issues with border-break and background-break.  My  
biggest problem with these properties is with the concept of a  
continuous strip vs. each box being treated individually (the values  
of continuous and each-box in the current background-break property  
vs. border-break: close | none).   I don't see any reason why two  
properties should be needed to get continuous vs. each-box behavior.

I'd like to propose one property that replaces both border-break and  
background-break:

box-break: continuous | each-box

With a generic box-break property, you can simply specify continuous  
or each-box, and then the borders, shadows, radii, backgrounds, etc.  
can all be adjusted accordingly.  I don't see a use case for weird  
combinations like "border-break: close; background-break:  
continuous."  The two seem like they should just always match.  There  
are also interesting open questions about what happens if these  
properties don't match, e.g., how does background-clip work?

So the above idea of a new unified property manages to cover border- 
break: close | none and background-break: continuous | each-box.

The remaining features that are left after you add a unified property  
are:

(1) The ability to specify a custom border at the break.
	- My proposal here is to scrap this feature for this draft.
	- I don't think the border syntax without images is rich enough to  
describe the kinds of breaks you'd want anyway (e.g., torn edges for  
example).

(2) The ability to specify bounding-box coverage for backgrounds.
	- My proposal here is to scrap this feature.
	- I do not see a use case for placing a background into the bounding  
box.   That just seems like it would give unusual results for both  
inlines and columns.  Columns broken across pages would be even  
stranger.

dave
(hyatt@apple.com)

Received on Thursday, 23 July 2009 20:34:15 UTC