Re: [css-multicol] can overflow content influence column height?

On 10/14/13 10:37 AM, "Håkon Wium Lie" <howcome@opera.com> wrote:

>An issue come up today in a discussion with a seasoned multicol
>implementer: does overflow content influence column height?
>
>Consider a multicol element with two columns, and column breaks after
>each paragraph:
>
>  article { columns: 2; background: yellow }
>  p { break-after: column }
>
>Then you pour three <p> elements into the <article>: two one-liners
>and then one long paragraph (say, 10 lines). What's the resulting
>height of the article? 1 or 10 lines (disregarding padding for a
>moment).
>
>I can see two alternatives:
>
>(1) the multicol element is made high enough to fit all columns. In
>this case, there will be three columns: two with one line each, and a
>third column -- outside the multicol element -- with 10 lines. The
>yellow box will be high enough to fit the third column, even if it
>shown outside the multicol element.
>
>(2) the multicol element is made high enough to fit all columns that
>end up inside the box. So there will be two columns with one line of
>text each inside the multicol element, and then there will be 10
>overflow columns outside.
>
>I think I have a slight preference for (2).

I agree with (2). The spec already says that column-balancing is not
applied through overflow columns in continuous media (does paged media
even have overflow columns?), and that column spanning can be ignored in
overflow columns. I'd say that the height of overflow columns should be
ignored in determining the height of the multicolumn element.

I don't see where it's actually specified how the used height of a
multicolumn element is determined. Is there some 2.1 sizing algorithm that
deals with the size of child boxes that's being used? If so, perhaps that
already deals with ignoring overflow boxes?

Thanks,

Alan

Received on Monday, 14 October 2013 18:06:19 UTC