Re: I18N-ISSUE-164: Flexbox specifcation unclear on determination of flex item's baseline. [CSS3-flexbox]

On 12/07/2012 19:39, Tab Atkins Jr. wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 12, 2012 at 12:02 AM, Anton Prowse <prowse@moonhenge.net> wrote:
>> This additional section looks good.  One thing that confused me slightly was
>> the following new sentence:
>>
>>    # When determining the baseline of a table cell, a flex container
>>    # provides a baseline just as a line box or table does. [CSS21]
>>
>> It took me a few moments to realized that it is referring to the following
>> specific part of the CSS21 section that's linked to from that sentence (viz.
>> 17.5.3):
>>
>>    # The baseline of a cell is the baseline of the first in-flow line
>>    # box in the cell, or the first in-flow table-row in the cell,
>>    # whichever comes first.
>>
>> The mental wheelspin that I had was caused by the use of the word "table" in
>> the new sentence, given that the above-quoted part uses "table-row".
>
> I'd call that a typo, actually.  Fixed to be "table-row".

Ah, cool.  Thanks!

>> I was about to propose that we use "table-row" in the flexbox spec instead
>> of "table"... but then it occurred to me that "table-row" is perhaps
>> undesirable in CSS21 anyway; maybe it should be "table" and accompanied by
>> the new note introduced in the new flexbox section (stating that the
>> baseline of a table" is the baseline of its first row).
>>
>> Yet there's an open issue on what the baseline of a table with no rows
>> is,[1] since that concept is needed for other parts of CSS21 as well; and we
>> need a web compat review to figure out whether the baseline of a table with
>> no rows plays any part in determining the baseline of a cell that contains
>> it.  If not, we can't make any change to the CSS21 sentence and the flexbox
>> sentence would have to change to use "table-row".
>>
>> [1] https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=15892
>
> We did an impromptu compat review in browsers.  Spoilers: it's inconsistent!
>
> Actually, we're pretty sure the differing results are from Firefox
> constructing an anonymous table-row and table-cell in the empty table
> (even though the algorithm in the spec wouldn't create any).  It then
> aligns that row as specified, while WebKit correctly skips over the
> row-less table when trying to determine a baseline.  We'd need to
> actually look at Gecko's code to be sure of this interpretation,
> though.
>
> Hopefully the inconsistency means we don't actually have to worry
> about the answer, and can choose whichever one is more convenient.

Great; I've added this info to the bug report.

Cheers,
Anton

Received on Thursday, 12 July 2012 18:33:14 UTC