Re: [CSS Intrinsic & Extrinsic Sizing] sizing of absolutely positioned elements

On Tue, Oct 9, 2012 at 1:55 PM, Tab Atkins Jr. <jackalmage@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Sep 7, 2012 at 3:30 PM, Ojan Vafai <ojan@chromium.org> wrote:
> > http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS2/visudet.html#containing-block-details
> > "If the element has 'position: absolute', the containing block is
> > established by the nearest ancestor with a 'position' of 'absolute',
> > 'relative' or 'fixed', in the following way:
> >
> > In the case that the ancestor is an inline element, the containing block
> is
> > the bounding box around the padding boxes of the first and the last
> inline
> > boxes generated for that element. In CSS 2.1, if the inline element is
> split
> > across multiple lines, the containing block is undefined.
> > Otherwise, the containing block is formed by the padding edge of the
> > ancestor."
> >
> > http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css3-sizing/#extrinsic-sizing
> > "less the box's inline-axis margins, borders, and padding."
> >
> > Should the extrinsic size of position:absolute elements include the
> padding
> > or not? My feeling is that it shouldn't for the purposes of things like
> > fill-available and auto-sizing perpendicular writing-modes, but I could
> be
> > convinced otherwise.
>
> Nothing to change here, luckily - you just misread that section. ^_^
>

I guess I still find the CSS2.1 language confusing: "the containing block
is formed by the padding edge of the ancestor." That makes it sound like
the containing block *is* the imaginary block formed by the padding edge of
the ancestor. I'm fine with your interpretation of it, but it's still not
totally clear to me just from reading the spec text.

The m/b/p that you're subtracting is the abspos's *own* m/b/p, because
> we are specifically defining the *inner* size.  The containing block
> doesn't have anything subtracted.
>
> > Not that we can change it now, but it's not clear to me why CSS2 chose
> the
> > padding box in the first place. What's the use-case this addresses?
>
> fantasai thinks that this was because of compat issues.
>
> ~TJ and fantasai
>