Re: [css-page-floats] ED 20130912

On Tue, September 17, 2013 10:57 am, Håkon Wium Lie wrote:
>  > 1, Do page floats break?  What happens when, e.g., a page float
> contains a
>  > table that is longer than the page?
>
> The Page Floats specification doesn't say anything about the breaking
> behavior, so page floats break like other elements/floats. It
> certainly makes sense to break tables that are longer than the page.

Understood (now).

>  > 2. 'clear' allows 'top' or 'bottom', but there are times, e.g., in a
>  > scientific journal article, when you want 'float: top', don't want
>  > graphics, etc., to be stacked, but would prefer the second graphic to
>  > float to the bottom of the same page rather than pushing the second
>  > graphic to the next page and further away from its reference.  If
> there's
>  > enough graphics or tables in the article, at one per page, the graphics
>  > and tables will end up past the start of the 'References' sections,
> which
>  > is usually seen as a bad thing.  How would that be done?
>
> So, you're saying that you would prefer a top-floating figure, but if
> another page float has taken that position, the figure should go to
> the bottom rather than being pushed to the next column/page?

Yes.  I'd almost say the same for bottom-floating going to the top rather
than being pushed, but when you want figures to remain in order, it would
be the second would-be-bottom-floating figure that could push the earlier
bottom-floating figure into being top-floating.

> That's a good use case, I think -- often you don't care if the element
> is top or bottom, it should just be alone (or, at least, be first in
> that position).

While preserving document order (at least in the cases that I can think of
right now).

> How about:
>
>   .figure {
>      float: top;
>      clear: alone;
>   }
>
> Or maybe:
>
>   .figure {
>      float: top;
>      clear: first;
>   }

In principle, yes, though an explanation of the keywords would help.

> I don't think we need to distigush between pages and columns -- the
> goal is to be closest to the reference point.

Agreed, almost.  It's a question of style whether it's okay to have two
figures at the top and bottom of one column and none in the other column
or better to have one figure at the bottom of each column of a two-column
page.

Off the top of my head, if you want, e.g., bottom-floating, it would
usually be better to have one figure at the bottom of each column and only
have a top-floating if you would also have something at the bottom of each
column.

Regards,


Tony Graham                                   tgraham@mentea.net
Consultant                                 http://www.mentea.net
Mentea       13 Kelly's Bay Beach, Skerries, Co. Dublin, Ireland

Received on Sunday, 22 September 2013 17:40:31 UTC