Re: [css3-flexbox] flexbox questions

On Jun 1, 2010, at 2:37 PM, Tab Atkins Jr. wrote:

> On Tue, Jun 1, 2010 at 11:55 AM, Alex Mogilevsky <alexmog@microsoft.com> wrote:
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: Brad Kemper [mailto:brad.kemper@gmail.com]
>>> Sent: Wednesday, May 26, 2010 9:54 PM
>>> 
>>> So, 'text-align:end' would not necessarily align the text with the end of the
>>> lines of text, if those lines appeared within a flexbox child of a 'pack:end'
>>> flexbox? Or at if they did, that might not have any relation to where the the
>>> edge used to pack against, even though it has the same value and no further
>>> reversal separates them? That doesn't seem like the right thing to do.
>>> 
>>> (I think I said that right.)
>>> 
>> 
>> It would of course simplify the design if textbox direction would simply use text direction. There is a precedent - table column direction switches from LTR to RTL with text direction. And table columns become horizontal in vertical flow.
>> 
>> It seems however that flexbox is meant to be used for special arrangement which has nothing to do with language. Although any use case can be achieved by setting different flow directions on flexbox and content inside flexbox, it somehow doesn't feel right to reuse text direction for box direction, especially when it is expected to be different very often.
> 
> The current Flexbox draft uses language direction for setting up the
> initial pack and align directions on the flexbox, if you specify
> box-orientation:inline-axis or block-axis.  Within box-pack and
> box-align, though, start/end/before/after refer to the flexbox's
> direction, not the language's direction.
> 
> Both uses are "logical" directions, they're just based on different
> things.  Possibly confusing, but I think it would be worse to try and
> come up with a third set of directional keywords.  ^_^

We should just kill box-pack / box-align in favor of flex units, and then there won't be any ambiguity regarding placement. :)

dave
(hyatt@apple.com)

Received on Tuesday, 1 June 2010 19:52:30 UTC