[css-position-3] Blockified absolutely-positioned inline elements

[litherum]

Consider the following:

<div>Hello <span style="position: absolute; width: 20px; height: 20px; background: red;"></span>World</div>

In all browsers, this is rendered by putting the red square's block-start and inline-start coordinate at the spot in the text where it would have appeared had it been position: static.

According to CSS 2.1,

the box is absolutely positioned, the computed value of 'float' is 'none', and display is set according to the table below. The position of the box will be determined by the 'top', 'right', 'bottom' and 'left' properties and the box's containing block.

However, I couldn't find any text about setting the 'top', 'right', 'bottom' or 'left' properties in this situation.

Even worse, css-position-3 seems to say this situation shouldn't blockify:

• Rule 1 doesn't apply because display isn't none.
• Rule 2 doesn't apply because the value of float isn't left or right.
• Rule 3 doesn't apply because float is none.
• Rule 4 doesn't apply because the element is not the root element.
• Rule 5 says nothing about blockifying.

[litherum]

@fantasai, @tabatkins, or @atanassov might know what to do.

[upsuper]

For CSS 2.1, I believe the behavior is described in 10.3.7 Absolutely positioned, non-replaced elements which states that when all of top, right, bottom, and left are auto (which is their initial value), the element is positioned as if it has position: static. So they don't need to be set in this situation unless author specifies something.

[litherum]

Cool, thanks for finding that!

We should probably leave this bug open about the css-position-3 part.

[fantasai]

We rewrote the spec, I think this is fixed now.

[fantasai]

@litherum Would you mind reviewing, and closing out if you think everything's been correctly addressed?