[whatwg] Reading spec without boxes

[Smylers]

Ian Hickson writes:

> On Wed, 5 Aug 2009, Elliotte Rusty Harold wrote:
> 
> > the little status boxes in the left margins on the draft spec?  They
> > seem to cover some of the text I'd like to read.
> 
> If they cover up any of the text, that is a bug.

I experienced this recently with a minimum font size set (in Firefox).
I tracked it down to something like this (sorry, that was on another
computer, so this is from memory):

* The main content's left margin, in which the boxes have to fit, is
  specified relative to the main content's text size.

* The boxes' font size is specified as a proportion of the main
  content's font size.

* The boxes' width is specified relative to the boxes' font size.  And
  because of the previous two points this is relative to the main
  content's left margin, so is always less than that margin regardless
  of the main font size.

* But with a minimum font size set in the UI, the actual box font size
  can end up larger than that computed above.  The boxes' width are then
  correspondingly bigger, and may now be wider than the main content's
  left margin.

I prototyped a fix for this, which went something like:

Instead of setting the smaller font on the boxes, set it on all their
children (.box > * -- or whatever the class name is).  This still makes
the text smaller.  But that leaves the width of the box being specified
relative to the main content font -- the same as the margin it needs to
fit in.  As such it's trivial to pick a size that always fits.

I hadn't yet submitted this because I first planned to try it in more
browsers.  In particular I'm concerned that the child selector isn't
support in some IE versions.

Hope that helps.

Smylers