Re: [css3-multicol] Ambiguous term "constrained" for column-fill

On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 10:46 AM, Håkon Wium Lie <howcome@opera.com> wrote:

> Also sprach Robert O'Callahan:
>
>  > >  In continuous media, this property will only be consulted if the
>  > >   column height is set to be longer than it would naturally be from
>  > >  its content. Otherwise, columns will automatically be balanced.
>  >
>  >
>  > If this is the intent, I think a better name would be "column-overflow".
>
> But it's not overflow, it's more like "underflow". That is, the issue
> only arises when there's more real-estate than there is content to
> fill it. In these cases one must decide whether one (a) fills in the
> block direction, or (b) fills in the text direction.


You're right, I was confused.

The reason I got confused is that I don't see why you'd only want it to
apply when there's more space than content. If there's more space than
content, then all the content is visible no matter what you do, so providing
author control via column-fill isn't very useful. On the other hand, if
there's more content than space, how you handle the overflowing content ---
balancing and overflowing vertically, or creating new columns and
overflowing horizontally --- is very important.

> Your text is still a bit vague, though. Do you mean that UAs should
> compute
>  > the height of the columns' content with balancing, and if that's greater
>  > than the height of the columns element, then we consult
>  > column-fill/column-overflow? I don't really like that behaviour;
> calculating
>  > balance heights can be expensive, where "column-fill:auto" can be much
>  > cheaper, and it would be good to be able to avoid the expensive stuff if
>  > we're just going to fall back to the simple thing.
>
> Good point.
>
> Do you have a suggested text?
>  <http://people.opera.com/howcome>
>

Why can't we just say that column-fill always applies? Then if the columns
element is 'height:auto' and no other height constraints apply, the
element's height will be computed via balancing and it doesn't really matter
what column-fill is, because 'auto' and 'balance' should give the same
results when the element's height is the balanced content height. But in the
presence of 'height', 'min-height' or 'max-height', the element's height
might not be the balanced content height, so column-fill can have an
observable effect: 'auto' forcing content into the first column if there's
more space than content, or creating overflowing columns if there's more
content than space, 'balance' making the columns always balanced and
overflowing or underflowing the element's box height.

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
53:5-6]