Re: [css-flexbox] Horizontal layout containment of inline text

On 01/09/2015 06:56 PM, Tab Atkins Jr. wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 6, 2015 at 7:39 PM, Bruno Racineux <bruno@hexanet.net> wrote:
>> I have been commenting/helping on a stackoverflow use case [1] which is an
>> attempt to do an horizontal size determination of a flex item based on
>> inline text content only and using columns, with a height constraint but no
>> given width constraint.
>>
>> Just wondering if that's a case Flex could technically handle given the
>> existing spec?
>>
>> This is my assessment so far illustrating the browser differences and
>> inaccurate width determinations:
>> http://stackoverflow.com/a/27777013/1647538
>>
>> Or is there a possible nested Flex configuration that could make this use
>> case work I am missing?
>>
>> [1]
>> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/27694966/make-a-div-containing-css-columns-have-unlimited-width/27777013#27777013
>
> This isn't quite possible to do in CSS right now.  The problem, as
> noted in the Stack Overflow, is that the main content will be limited
> to the width of the viewport, and then start overflowing.  This is
> because normal layout assumes that the inline dimension will always
> have a finite containing-block size.  At the limit, you run into the
> initial containing block, which has dimensions equal to the viewport.

Um. If the idea is "make the multi-col as wide as it needs to be to
hold all the columns text given X height and Y column-width", then
that's what the 'max-content' keyword of the width property does,
and that's *supposed* to be the default behavior in Flexbox if you
don't allow shrinking on that item.

Nobody implements it like that, but that *is* what's in the spec.
Hopefully people get it fixed, since it's a prerequisite for making
orthogonal flows work with long texts correctly...

~fantasai

Received on Saturday, 21 February 2015 03:17:21 UTC