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

On Thu, Jul 23, 2009 at 3:33 PM, David Hyatt<hyatt@apple.com> wrote:
> 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.

I am in favor of this.  I also don't see any real case for the other
possible combinations, and the current way it works is sort of
confusing to puzzle out.

> 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).

Well, a dashed or dotted border would be pretty enough some times, but
I wouldn't particularly cry if this was lost.

> (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.

I definitely see the use for this ability, but it's nothing that can't
be done by putting a background on a container element instead.  I'd
rather see ::outside get put in and let me do effects like this more
generally.  Agreed that the effect on page-broken columns would often
be strange, and I don't believe it can be cleanly fixed through this
property (though setting box-break: each-box on the container would do
it easily).

~TJ

Received on Thursday, 23 July 2009 20:54:18 UTC