Re: [css3-text-layout] "design philosophy" or "basic idea" how vertical writing would work in CSS

On 06/28/2010 02:10 AM, Ishii Koji wrote:
> Fantasai, thank you for the reply, and I think I've got much better understanding
> of what you said. Also thank you again for the link to the CSS3 box module. I
> didn't know about that.
>
> Please allow me to ask a few more questions. Sorry I'm slow to understand.
>
> 1. So the plan is not about margins and paddings, but to make all left/right/top/
> bottom are against page, and add start/end/before/after properties to all existing
> properties, like border-* and position:*. Is this correct?

That's the current thinking, although there seems to be some resistance to adding
new properties for this. In any case, left/right/top/bottom will be relative to
the page, yes.

> 2. Regardless of the flow, width is horizontal length, and height is vertical
>    length. Is this correct?

This one I am not 100% sure. If we go the start/end/before/after route (which
is what XSL:FO did), then we'll want a physical width and height as well as
a logical width and height. But I can't come up with reasonable names. :/
Multi-column Layout uses 'column-width' and 'column-length' as logical names,
so we may end up with e.g. 'width' and 'length' for logical measurements to
be consistent with that, and then 'height' and something else for physical
ones. I am not sure.

> 3. There might be some exceptions to the rule 2 though, like line-height. Or
>    are you also adding line-width property?

Correct. line-height and vertical-align will rotate. Most properties that control
layout within a line of text will be reused. Note that the "top" of the line does
not necessarily correspond with the "top" (before edge) of the block: in Mongolian
layout, the "top" of the line and the "top" of the paragraph are opposite directions.

> 4. All existing CSS 2 documents must be converted to start/end/before/after to
>    make them usable for vertical flow. Is this correct?

Yes, CSS2 documents used in vertical flow will either need to be re-authored
for vertical flow, or, if we add start/end/before/after, then converted to
those.

~fantasai

Received on Monday, 28 June 2010 19:02:44 UTC