Re: 5.3.2 Margin, Space, and Indent Properties

Dear Editors,

I don't agree with the disposition for Comment 20 item 3 in
http://www.w3.org/2001/08/28-XSL-PR-DOC. There is a good
reason to make an exception to the inheritance rules for
the start-indent and end-indent properties when applied to
an element that generates a new reference area. The reason
is that they are defined in terms of reference areas, while
other inherited properties such as text-align are not.

For a reference area there should be two computed values
for the indent properties: an outer and an inner one. The
outer value affects the position of the reference area
itself, while the inner value affects the contents of the
reference area. The inner computed value of the indent
properties for a reference area should always be "0". The
outer computed value should be calculated in the existing
way.

This doesn't change the inheritance rules themselves,
because section 5.1.4 says:

...otherwise, the specified value of that property on the child
is the computed value of that property on the parent formatting object.

If the parent formatting object generates a reference area
and it the property is an indent property, the inner computed
value should be used.

The disposition states that it is anyway possible to specify
the value explicitly if needed for the cases that now produce
a counter-intuitive result. The given examples, however,
are rare and therefore it is better to require an explicit
value for them instead of the regular cases.

Best regards,

Werner.
-- 
Werner Donné  --  Re                                     http://www.pincette.biz
Engelbeekstraat 8                                               http://www.re.be
BE-3300 Tienen
tel: (+32) 486 425803	e-mail: werner.donne@re.be

Received on Tuesday, 6 November 2007 15:43:11 UTC