Re: CSS Regions considered harmful (was: [css-regions] issue 16858 redux)

On Thu, Jan 23, 2014 at 7:18 PM, L. David Baron <dbaron@dbaron.org> wrote:
...

>
> Also, to be clear:  I think it would be great for CSS to have a
> mechanism for reordering and changing the tree structure of its
> input, before that input reaches the layout system.  Would that
> address your use cases?
>
> What I don't want is the reordering after fragmentation happens,
> which requires the contortions of using a layout system designed to
> deal with content in a certain order and giving it the content in a
> different order.
>


What we would need is for different fragments of the same content to have
different parent elements (= they are not siblings). That way we can make
footnotes/sidenodes/endnotes flow out of the main flow. In combination with
contenteditable (and some javascript), this is especially useful. Without
CSS Regions and without the need to edit the content), I guess we could
have some javascript measure how much space the content takes up and then
try to cut it up and the right places, creating different elements for the
contents of each page and the contents of each footnote and then move them
around.

As I understand it, the criticism of CSS Regions at least in part seems to
be that too many elements are created. Yet the end result would be that we
would have a lot more Javascript and extra DOM elements if CSS Regions are
not available, even if HÃ¥kon's spec is implemented (in case we want to do
something slightly more complex fx in the headers) or CSS overflow is
implemented, at least as long as fragments have to have the same parent
elements.


>
> -David
>
> --
> �   L. David Baron                         http://dbaron.org/   �
> �   Mozilla                          https://www.mozilla.org/   �
>              Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
>              What I was walling in or walling out,
>              And to whom I was like to give offense.
>                - Robert Frost, Mending Wall (1914)
>



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Johannes Wilm
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