Re: [css3-layout] shorthand for slot construction

2009/10/21 Andrew Fedoniouk <news@terrainformatica.com>:
> Giovanni Campagna wrote:
>>
>> 2009/10/20 Andrew Fedoniouk <news@terrainformatica.com>:
>>>
>>> Giovanni Campagna wrote:
>>>>
>>>> 2009/10/20 Andrew Fedoniouk <news@terrainformatica.com>:
>>>>>
>>>>> Tab Atkins Jr. wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 11:43 AM, Andrew Fedoniouk
>>>>>> <news@terrainformatica.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> CSS tables cannot reproduce <table> layout.
>
>>>
>>> It seems like in mentioned engines table-cell value of display
>>> attribute is changing the meaning of percent length units.
>>
>> Yes
>>
>>> Is such behavior defined somewhere?
>>
>> Informatively in CSS2 17.5.2.2 and normatively in
>> css3-tables-algorithm, available at
>> <http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css3-tables-algorithm>.
>>
>>> So instead of 30% of parent width they use some percents as
>>> sort of flexes.
>>>
>>> How then to set width of display:table-cell element to
>>> 30% width of its container?
>>
>> table-layout: fixed
>
> So we allowed to have sort-of-flexes but without percentages or
> percentages but without flexes. Really the whole design around tables in CSS
> looks like last minute hack.

If 1998 (publication of CSS2) is last minute, I agree with you, it is
not intuitive in some cases. But I'm not sure we can change it, given
the amount of currently published content for which it works.

>>
>>> These display:table-*** dances looks like dirty hack here.
>>
>> But they work.
>
>
> Consider these samples:
>
>  http://terrainformatica.com/w3/tables-css.htm
>
> I do not think that all this can be considered as something
> ready for prime time.

Well, that looks really weird.
Maybe Tables 3 or Tables 4 may include a "flexible" table algorithm
which could make more sense.

> Really I have designed html table engine by myself and
> have implemented Templates in CSS but I failed to get
> idea of half of samples in the document above (questions are in the
> document).

That's the point of having a normative algorithm for implementers. If
needed, we can add a new one for authors.

> How all this in principle is solving problems of <table>
> based page designs?

I don't actually know, I stopped using <table> a while ago (until IE8
came out with almost full CSS2 support). You should ask the designers
of <table>-based websites.

> --
> Andrew Fedoniouk.
>
> http://terrainformatica.com
>

Giovanni