Re: [css3-regions] Avoid Markup Clutter

On 12/20/11 1:59 PM, "Tab Atkins Jr." <jackalmage@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Dec 20, 2011 at 1:45 PM, Alan Stearns <stearns@adobe.com> wrote:
>> There are plenty of examples in other specifications that use divs for the
>> purpose of styling a collection of child elements. The only wrinkle in
>> regions is that those child elements come from a different branch of the
>> element tree. Is a div whose sole purpose is to draw a border around a set
>> of child elements clutter? Or a div that's only there to turn on
>> display:grid? Some 'wrapper' divs are quite useful and uncontroversial. I
>> think region divs should be considered as wrapper elements, even if they
>> appear to be empty in the markup.
> 
> Yes, those divs are clutter, if they're not being used for anything
> else.  In some cases they're sufficiently worthwhile that we ignore
> the clutter (like requiring a wrapper to hook a new layout mode off
> of), but others are just things that we bear for now, because there's
> no other way around them yet, like drawing a border around a group of
> elements.
> 
>[other concerns about regions]
> 
> Officially, I'm fine with leaving Regions alone for now, with the
> understanding that we'll solve the problem in the near future with
> some mechanism for generating arbitrary pseudo-elements.
> 
> ~TJ

Is there a place for collecting requirements for generating arbitrary
pseudo-elements? If not, I'll make an ideas page on the wiki.

The use cases discussed so far are:

1. Creating regions
2. Creating borders
3. Turning on layout modes

I'd also add:

4. Adding backgrounds
5. Adding exclusion shapes

It seems to me that there would need to be a way of determining how these
pseudo-elements are inserted into the box tree - where they land in the
tree, and what their children are.

I know there was a lot of discussion on the list about anonymous boxes when
the regions specification had text for it in an early draft. I'll comb
through that as well.

Thanks,

Alan

Received on Wednesday, 21 December 2011 00:46:12 UTC