[xep-support] Understanding area rectangles

W. Eliot Kimber eliot at isogen.com
Sat Nov 2 03:57:24 PST 2002


David Tolpin wrote:

> Yes, the behavior you are observing with RenderX XEP (and, I hope,
> with XSL Formatter which I didn't try recently since it runs under Windows
> only but I know that our implementations are consistent in this respect)
> is correct.

XEP and XSL Formatter produce identical results from my test document.

> It is correct because start/end-indent are 0 by default; margins are derived
> values and are set so that margin+border+padding=indent holds true.

I see that this statement in the spec:

"If the corresponding absolute margin property is not explicitly 
specified, or if the corresponding relative property is specified on the 
formatting object and the absolute property only specified by the 
expansion of a shorthand, the corresponding absolute margin property is 
calculated according to the following formulae:

margin-corresponding = start-indent - inherited_value_of(start-indent)
- padding-corresponding - border-corresponding-width

Supports the behavior seen, but it still seems to be inconsistent with 
the picture in 4.4.1, or least, it's not clear to me why 4.4.1 does not 
mention margins (in fact, margins seem to come out of nowhere in the 
discussion, which is probably part of my confusion on this topic).

> To get stacking block as in your diagram, you either have to specify
> margin="0pt" explicitly, which is not a good idea since there are no
> 'logical' margin properties (NO margin-before/after/start/end); or 
> calculate indents as sums of border+padding.
> 
> This may seem non-intuitive at a first glance, but in fact this is
> a very consistent approach. 

I'm not sure in what context this approach is "consistent", since you 
get very different effects (and, to my mind, completely 
counter-intuitive effects) when margin is unspecified from when it is. 
And I can't see why you would ever, in normal practice, want to specify 
margins for anything other than the page regions, given the space-* and 
*-indent properties.

Given that the combination of space-*, border, padding, and *-indent 
]should] give me complete control over where the various area rectangles 
are placed, I'm having a hard time seeing what value margin would have 
to me as a layout designer, especially when the implications of its not 
being set to "0" are 1) counter intuitive and 2) almost certainly not 
what I expected, expecially given section 4.4.1.

But this is an issue for the FO editors, not this forum, as the 
implementation obvserved does seem to be in accordance with the spec.

Cheers,

E.
-- 
W. Eliot Kimber, eliot at isogen.com
Consultant, ISOGEN International

1016 La Posada Dr., Suite 240
Austin, TX  78752 Phone: 512.656.4139

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