RE: [CSS21][css-text] percentages on text-indent

> -----Original Message-----
> From: L. David Baron [mailto:dbaron@dbaron.org]
> Sent: Tuesday, February 10, 2015 4:38 PM
> 
> From a side discussion with Greg Whitworth at the face-to-face meeting
> (triggered by Greg pointing out
> https://twitter.com/HugoGiraudel/status/565093151904645120 ):
> 
> Looking at either:
>   http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css2/text.html#indentation-prop

>   http://dev.w3.org/csswg/css-text/#text-indent-property

> it's not clear what percentages on text-indent mean.

Good point, I can see how this can be interpreted either way - containing block of the text content or the block itself.

> It says that percentages refer to the width of the containing block:
> but is that the containing block of the line with the text, or the containing
> block of the block to which text-indent applies (i.e., the first block's
> containing block)?

Our rationale has been that the text-indent is a property effecting the inline content of a block, similar to text-alignment, align-content etc. In this respect resolving the text-indent percentage against the block itself makes the behavior independent of the block's containing block. With that resizing the block's containing block has no effect to text-indent in the case the block has a fixed width.

> Apparently browsers disagree on this.  Making the spec's wording more
> precise seems likely to help.

Totally agree - let's fix it.

Thanks,
Rossen