Re: [css-regions] Named Flows, Elements and Box Generation

Hey,

you might remember I wrote a little while ago. We have created a little
javascript app that renders pages in the browser the way they are printed
using CSS Regions. ( http://sourcefabric.github.io/BookJS/ )

This includes not only splitting the text into individual pages, but also
adding footnotes, margin notes, cross references, word index, top floats,
etc. . The idea is that something can be a footnote on one device, and on
another device it may make more sense to show the same content as a margin
note, or a floating box or some third thing.

There is now both Sourcefabric's Booktype which uses BookJS for book
rendering in the backend and Fidus Writer, which has grown into something
like a (still not quite as good) Google Docs alike editor for scientific
publishing. We think it's really great that these features now are
available in Safari 6.1/7.0, without any flags.

This morning I was told here at the Mozilla Festival 2013 that Fidus Writer
was one of their strategic picks for what they think is important for open
science (a new field the Mozilla Festival is expanding into), so that is
where I am right now. It is a little sad that we cannot actually run any of
this on Mozilla Firefox, but most people here have several browsers
installed so it shouldn't be much of a problem.

What worries me a bit more is reading here and also in a few other fora,
that the Mozilla camp is opposed to CSS Regions with named flows entirely.

I can understand that overflow:fragments make a lot of sense in many cases
when nothing more is required. But if overflow boxes all have to be
siblings, that would certainly be problematic if you do stuff like we do
it. Or what about doing subflows from flows?

I do not get the problem with the HTML-element either. Whenever one makes
just the most simple websites, one includes a lot of extra elements to be
able to position other elements within it. One of the most basic things to
position elements is to have an outer element with the position:absolute
inside an position:relative element. I don't see how adding an extra
element for CSS Region-flowing is much different.

Btw, if any of you are more interested in this and you are at the Mozilla
Festival, please join my session on Sunday 11-14 entitled "What needs to be
done about scientific (text) publication on the net?" in the science part
on the second floor (212). Bring a laptop with either Safari or
Chrome/Chromium. Next year we will hopefully be able to run it on Firefox
as well.

-- 
Johannes Wilm
Fidus Writer
http://www.fiduswriter.com