[css-multicol-2] Should multicol wrapping happen in paged media and nested multicols?

[rachelandrew]

In a discussion on the PR for the changes to the multicol model section @mstensho and I discussed whether block direction should occur in paged contexts and also in nested multicolumn layouts.

My feeling is that we're doing this for continuous media, to essentially create what already happens when you break to new pages in Paged Media, and I'm not sure there is any case for doing this in Paged Media (given the additional complexity it raises).

Morten suggested we also state that it does not work in nested multicol contexts, which I think would also be fine.

Therefore the proposed resolution is that block direction wrapping does not happen in any nested fragmentation context (which would include Paged Media and nested multicols).

If we do resolve this, then #11977 can be closed.

[css-meeting-bot]

The CSS Working Group just discussed [css-multicol-2] Should multicol wrapping happen in paged media and nested multicols?, and agreed to the following:

• RESOLVED: column-height does apply in nested contexts

The full IRC log of that discussion

<TabAtkins> rachelandrew: when i proposed block-direction:overflow, i'd only ever thought about continuous contexts (web), not paged media
<TabAtkins> rachelandrew: as i discussed with morten, he wondered if that's what we wanted. also brought up complexity around nested multicol
<astearns> zakim, open queue
<Zakim> ok, astearns, the speaker queue is open
<astearns> q+ fantasai
<TabAtkins> rachelandrew: i don't see any particular reason to do this in paged media. lots of complexity when you already have a fixed-size thing
<TabAtkins> rachelandrew: if it's only for continuous context, then, we could also say it doesn't happen in a nested multicol context. morten agree with this
<TabAtkins> rachelandrew: i've never seen an example of nested multi-row multicol in the wild
<astearns> q+
<TabAtkins> rachelandrew: so that's my proposal
<astearns> ack fantasai
<TabAtkins> fantasai: I disagree with doing this.
<TabAtkins> fantasai: I think we shoudln't transform the layout so substantially when printing
<TabAtkins> fantasai: also sometimes people use nested multicol to simulat epagination
<TabAtkins> fantasai: that said, fragmenting these rows doesn't make sense. we def shouldn't do that
<TabAtkins> fantasai: i think the right thing is to say that...
<TabAtkins> fantasai: ahven't thought this thru yet
<TabAtkins> fantasai: we dont' want to break inside a column row, just between
<TabAtkins> fantasai: so q is how tall are the columns - do we shorten them near the bottom of the page, or push them to the next page?
<TabAtkins> rachelandrew: that's the next issue
<TabAtkins> fantasai: so if block-direction wrapping does happen in nested fragmentation, you just never fragment a row of columns
<kizu> +1
<TabAtkins> rachelandrew: that does simplify things a bit. we'll have to decide what to do with th eleftover space, i think there's an issue for that
<astearns> ack astearns
<TabAtkins> astearns: we did consider this when we were going thru Regions
<TabAtkins> astearns: so there are bit in Regions about nested fragmentation contexts, and in the Fragmentation module about nested flows
<TabAtkins> astearns: don't recall our use-cses. but there's something there to build on.
<TabAtkins> astearns: but generally i agree with elika, there are layouts with reason to have multiple rows to be displayed on each page.
<TabAtkins> astearns: not working when nested will break some people's sites
<TabAtkins> rachelandrew: okay, that's about it for this topic then
<TabAtkins> astearns: should we take a resolution that column-height does apply in paged media?
<TabAtkins> rachelandrew: in nested contexts in general
<TabAtkins> astearns: so proposed resolution is that column-height does apply in nested contexts
<TabAtkins> astearns: objections?
<TabAtkins> RESOLVED: column-height does apply in nested contexts