Re: [css3-flexbox] auto margins and flex-align: baseline

On Wed, Apr 4, 2012 at 4:37 PM, Alex Mogilevsky <alexmog@microsoft.com>wrote:

> ± From: tc@google.com [mailto:tc@google.com] On Behalf Of Tony Chang
> ± Sent: Wednesday, April 04, 2012 12:51 PM
> ±
> ± I think the combination of auto margins and flex-align: baseline is
> going to
> ± cause an extra pass through flex items.
> ±
> ± ...
> ±
> ± I see a few ways to handle this:
> ± 1) Do an extra pass after margin:auto to determine the new max ascent.
>  This
> ± works, but it's slow.
> ± 2) margin: auto always causes flex-align/flex-pack to be ignored so we
> can
> ± ignore it when computing the max ascent.
> ± 3) Maybe only have margin: auto apply to the main axis direction?  I'm
> not
> ± sure how many web developers are going to expect margin auto to work in
> the
> ± cross direction.
>
> Actually it is (2), as currently defined in the spec:
>

Why does it make sense to do this? margin:auto is the legacy api for
centering. flex-align/flex-pack are more explicit and easier to understand.
Why not have non-auto flex-align/flex-pack cause margin:auto to be ignored?


>
>        * Through calculations of preferred sizes and flexible
>        lengths, auto margins are considered to be zero.
>
>        * Immediately before pack and align steps, if there are
>        any auto margins on items in the direction of alignment
>        and there is positive free space, the free space is
>        distributed equally to the auto margins.
>
>        * If free space was distributed to auto margins, the
>        following pack or align step has no effect.
>
> The intent of the condition "if there is positive free space" is to keep
> flex items aligned uniformly when there isn't any free space and auto
> margins were of no use.
>
> It looks like there may be a circular dependency problem with baseline (in
> particular when flexbox cross-size is auto), and even if there isn't a
> circular dependency, precise solution may be complicated.
>
> The options I see here:
>
> a) The option (1) above - recalculate baseline without items that have
> auto margins in effect. I don't think I care about performance here (this
> is rare, and this extra "pass" is not relayout, it is enumeration of an
> array of layout results), but the result may be ambiguous or have a
> discontinuity between positive and negative extra space
>
> b) If an item has auto margins in cross direction, don't ever apply
> baseline alignment to it. Treat 'baseline' as 'center' and do that in case
> of overflow.
>
> c) Calculate baseline accounting for all items, including the ones which
> end up aligned with margins. Don't change the baseline when any of the
> items are not aligned with it.
>
> I think I would prefer (c). It is simple and it will very rarely have a
> result that is noticeably different from multi-pass. Also, changing margins
> from 0 to 'auto' on any item doesn't change STF cross-size of flexbox (and
> that is true for all other kinds of alignment)
>
> Alex
>
>
>
>