[whatwg] Joined blocks

[Shannon]

I agree this is _mostly_ a CSS issue except that there is semantic 
meaning to the join attribute beyond layout. The attribute could serve 
as a guide to search engines, web-scrapers or WYSIWYG applications that 
two areas of the page should be considered a single piece of content. I 
am also unsure as to how this might affect other aspects of browser, 
javascript or DOM behaviour. There may be other uses or side-effects I 
can't imagine. At any rate CSS cannot associate elements so the join 
attribute should be considered independent of the style considerations 
as a means of saying "this block follows that one". Nonetheless I will 
do as you suggest.

Shannon


Ian Hickson wrote:
> On Fri, 1 Aug 2008, Shannon wrote:
>   
>> Something I think is really missing from HTML is "linked text" (in the 
>> traditional desktop publishing sense), where two or more text boxes are 
>> joined so that content overflows the first into the second and 
>> subsequent boxes. This is a standard process for practically all 
>> multi-column magazines, books and news layouts. It is especially 
>> valuable for column layouts where the information is dynamic and 
>> variable in length and therefore cannot be manually balanced. This is 
>> not something that can be solved server-side since the actual flow is 
>> dependent on user style-sheets, viewport and font-size.
>>     
>
> I agree that this would be a useful feature for the Web platform. However, 
> I believe the CSS working group is a better venue for exploring such 
> options. I recommend forwarding your proposal to www-style at w3.org.
>
>   

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