Re: box tree terminology

On 03/31/2011 11:44 AM, Alex Mogilevsky wrote:
> So we are trying to give a name to something that doesn't really exist, but could
> be useful as imaginary concept to help understand reality...

Depending on how you conceptualize it, it could exist in reality.
In Mozilla's code, such things are realized as a doubly-linked
chain of nsIFrame objects that share certain data structures.

> So what kind of text are you trying to write that would benefit from defining
> separate two kinds of boxes?

Explaining how line breaking works. How pagination works. How the borders and
backgrounds are applied to the broken boxes. Etc. I don't have any specific
instances off the top of my head, but I've run across the terminology issue
multiple times when working on CSS2.1 text.

In many cases using the term 'element', e.g. "block container element" doesn't
work because we also have to consider anonymous boxes, which split into multiple
boxes, but are still all part of one box.

~fantasai

Received on Thursday, 31 March 2011 19:03:11 UTC