Re: Multiple baseline question

Sorry for the delay in the reply.

>>>> That said, I'm not sure what the baseline of an inline-block
>>>> containing only a table is supposed to be.
>>>
>>>
>>> ... which is related to (and possibly a sub-problem of) the problem that
>>> we
>>> don't know what the baseline of a table is.  The flexbox spec now
>>> contains
>>> the following Note:
>>>
>>>    # CSS 2.1 did not define the baseline of block or table boxes. It is
>>>    # expected that they will be defined consistent with those of table
>>>    # cells, as follows:
>>>    #
>>>    # [...]
>>>    #
>>>    # ‘table’
>>>    #     The inline-axis baseline of a table box is the baseline of its
>>>    #     first row.
>>
>>
>> I don't know what the baseline of a table would be either but authors
>> seem to be expecting that the 2 blocks are aligned (ie we would align
>> the cell's first line boxes) [1]. This doesn't match what the flexbox
>> spec is saying as it would align the cell's bottom content edge in the
>> example due to the vertical-align: middle property on the table cell.
>
>
> Yes, that's right.  In the simple example given, it's easy for authors to
> say that they want a certain alignment.  But it becomes easier to see why
> the baseline for a table row (and from there, table box) was defined like
> that when you consider the case of a top-aligned table cell, a tall
> middle-aligned cell and a bottom-aligned table cell all in the same row.
> With nothing much else to go on, keying into the lowest cell's bottom
> content edge seems like a reasonable choice.

It seems that 3 engines (Internet Explorer, Firefox and WebKit prior
to the change that prompted this question) were agreeing on the
behavior in this case and were ignoring the 'table' for the purpose of
determining the baseline, thus were aligning the bottom edge of the
'inline-block' container's margin box. Considering that it also
matches what people would expect in this case, I feel like it would be
better to revise the definition of a baseline for 'table' to keep
compatibility with existing content. Let me know if that makes sense.

Thanks,
Julien

Received on Tuesday, 31 July 2012 19:54:35 UTC