Re: Splitting 'display'

On Fri, Apr 16, 2010 at 8:46 PM, Andrew Fedoniouk
<news@terrainformatica.com> wrote:
> If so then I don't think any change in 'display' will have any chance.
> Legacy reasons and so on.

I'm confused.  A change in display would indeed be impossible.

Turning display into a shorthand property that still accepts all the
single-token values is completely backwards-compatible.


> In my opinion the 'flow' as a definition of layout manager of some
> [block] container - definition of the way how it layouts its children
> has significantly more chances.
>
> 'flow' is orthogonal to 'display' in the sense that only
> 'block', 'inline-block', 'table-cell' and that strange 'list-item' may have
> 'flow'
> defined and meaningfully interpreted. For all other values of the display
> property computed value of the 'flow' is 'auto' (default).
>
> In general 'flow' makes sense only for block elements - those that
> establish box context and so have width and height.

Take a look at what I've actually done, and how I've split things up.
I think it's much closer to what you are thinking than you realize.


> In my opinion addition of table-*** values to the display was strategic
> mistake. They do not create any reasonable solutions - just problems.
> I believe that the flow with its values: vertical , horizontal ,
> vertical-wrap ,
> horizontal-wrap and "template" will make table-*** stuff obsolete.
> If CSS is ought to define <table> as it is now then it will be enough
> to add flow: table value with wording: "HTML table layout manager -
> replaces TR,TD,TH elements using HTML table rules".

That's very nearly what I've specced.  There is a single 'table' value
for display-inside (the "flow" property).  All the other table values
are display-outside values, which just describe how they interact
inside of a table flow.

(There is also a 'table-inside' value for display-inside, but it's
just to make everything work a little more smoothly.  It doesn't
actually *do* anything.)

~TJ

Received on Saturday, 17 April 2010 04:07:03 UTC