Re: [css-align] logical alignment and bidi / orthogonal flows

I agree that this seems like a very reasonable way to specify these
properties. Since children get positioned by the parent, this seems
like the most straightforward way to implement them too.

-christian

On Thu, Apr 11, 2013 at 1:00 PM, fantasai <fantasai.lists@inkedblade.net> wrote:
> Tab and I were discussing the interpretation of 'start' and 'end' on
> justify-self vs. justify-content vs. justify-items and came up with
> an issue wrt what happens when the container and the child have
> different writing modes.
>
> For example, imagine an RTL item inside a flexbox or grid that is LTR.
> If 'align-items' is set to 'start' on the flexbox, all LTR items will
> align to the left edge, because their 'align-self' values look up to
> their parent's 'align-items' value. For the RTL item, it will also
> acquire 'start' alignment: the issue is whether it will align with
> all the items on the left side, or whether it will follow its own
> directionality and align to the right.
>
> Our conclusion is that these keywords should be container-focussed,
> that is, justify-content/justify-items resolve against the element
> itself, and justify-self resolves against the parent.
>
> This keeps the values of justify-items (on the parent) and justify-self
> (on the child), which both control the child, consistent. (It's also
> consistent with how logical properties work in orthogonal flows.)
>
> Flexbox avoids this issue by using 'flex-start' and 'flex-end', which
> are defined to be relative to the 'flex-flow'. Matching up 'start'
> and 'end' in this way is also consistent with that container-focussed
> approach as well.
>
> It does feel a little weird for the more document-centric uses of
> block layout, but it makes a lot of sense for the layout-centric Grid
> and Flexbox layout models.
>
> So this is mostly a heads-up, and a request for feedback if anyone
> has concerns or comments. We'll be updating CSS3 Box Alignment
> to clarify this point accordingly.
>
> We're also proposing to add 'self-start' and 'self-end' values to
> the align/justify-self properties, so that if an author does want
> to set alignment relative to the item's own writing mode, it can
> be done as well.
>
> ~fantasai and TJ
>

Received on Monday, 15 April 2013 08:47:56 UTC