Minutes Sydney F2F 2016-02-02 Part I: A report on research into automatic layout, CSS Text, Round Display
A report on research into automatic layout
- Bert had visited groups from Monash University and YesLogic to hear about the work they’re doing creating algorithms in constraint spaces. Their algorithms not only take the known constraints, but can recompute as they get additional information.
- Uses for constraint solving include footnotes, sidenotes, indexing, table layout, and line breaking. It was mentioned some of this could be hooked in via Houdini.
- There was interest in working more with both groups, especially the expertise from the YesLogic folks. Specifically it was thought they would have useful feedback on the Grid spec.
Full Minutes
CSS Text
- There was agreement that there is a strong use case to solve for aligning to a particular character in table columns.
- Resolved: left-align the alignment characters.
Full Minutes || Spec Referenced
Round Display
- Resolved: Add radial-gradient
side
keywords to polar-distance. Mark issue for how to get e.g. from top left corner, 100% of shortest side.
- There was some uncertainty about how ‘contain’ should behave in relation to the previous resolution and in general. However, it was decided that decisions on if ‘contain’ should be a default behavior should wait on a final definition.
- The existing proposals for addressing polar positioning and abspos were discussed, but there were still unanswered questions.
- An outstanding concern that the mental model for this was the opposite of the mental model for the rest of CSS alignment to achieve the desired effect.
- Resolved: Make the following changes:
- Remove ‘polar’ value of ‘position’. Polar positioning applies to absolute/fixed/static/sticky/ relative positioned elements.
- Remove ‘auto’ value of ‘polar-distance’. Initial value is 0.
- Add ‘auto’ value to ‘polar-origin’. This means find the origin using normal rules for absolute/fixed/static/sticky/relative positioning.
- Make ‘auto’ initial value of ‘polar-origin’.
- Add an open issue as to whether top/right/bottom/left properties are ignored or interpreted somehow when ‘polar-origin’ is not ‘auto’.
- Note: polar-origin doesn’t apply to relatively-positioned elements. (Or mark an issue for making it apply somehow).
- Joone presented a proposal for supporting 3d transforms in round display. However, there were two major issues with this proposal:
- Transforms aren’t a positioning system. This proposal presumes that they are.
- Need use cases for what 3D polar coordinates.
- However, there was agreement that it might be interesting to add functions for using polar-positioning-like syntax as an alternate way to express existing transforms.
- The ability to support scrolling on a round display would best come from some of the scrolling work being done in Houdini.
- Since most pages are not designed for round displays, browsers on such devices simulate a rectangular viewport by designating a fully-visible area of the display. For pages that are prepared to handle the constraints of working with a round display, it was suggested to add an @viewport switch for authors to opt into the full viewport.
- Resolved: Publish new WD of Round Display, with polar positioning resolution incorporated (@viewport for next publication okay)
- The discussion from Sapporo about device-radius was revisited; originally it had been concluded that the query would no longer return a radius, but instead return if you’re visible or not.
- There was concern from LG about complexity and implementability.
- There was a suggestion that a qualitative query for “roundish” vs “squarish” would be useful, regardless.
- Florian will write up a proposal for this new media query.
Full Minutes || Spec Referenced
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