RE: partitioning rectangles into sub-rectangles -- CSS vs <table>

Hi Ollie,

 

This looks promising. I finally got a chance to experiment a little bit and
there seem to be enormous browser differences with Opera and Chrome doing
what I suppose is intended, firefox and IE do the same thing (which is weird
at best) and then Safari (for Windows) just goes off in its own direction
(consistent with its ancestry and historical precedents).

 

And of course there is the issue that it takes about six times as much code,
which is far more complex than <table> with colspan and rowspan, but I
gather that is how the CSS folks are ensuring their job security these days
;)

 

 

Cheers

David

 

From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]]
On Behalf Of Oliver Boermans
Sent: Saturday, March 22, 2014 4:30 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [svg-developers] partitioning rectangles into sub-rectangles --
CSS vs <table>

 

  

Hi David,

I haven't looked closely at the problem you are trying to solve, but this
might be the CSS3 you are looking for:
http://css-tricks.com/snippets/css/a-guide-to-flexbox/

Cheers

Ollie

 

On 9 March 2014 03:50, David Dailey <[email protected]> wrote:

 

I've been fiddling with this problem (vaguely related to Euler diagrams) off
and on for a decade or so:

 

http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/1116/number-of-ways-to-partition-a-r
ectangle-into-n-sub-rectangles

 

Now, here is the question for you folks:

 

We are told that using HTML tables to divide space into geometry is a
terrible non-non, akin, perhaps to fratricide or, at least, fracking. Alas,
colspan and rowspan (curse the folks who invented them!) makes it so
painless (see for example, the little table (a geometric metaphor for the
thought process) at http://cs.sru.edu/~ddailey/Navigability.html) ! Is there
any way nearly so easy to do this with CSS? I was once told that it was
impossible in CSS2, but that CSS3 would make it again possible (though
doubtlessly far more complex).

 

I know that the subject raises passion in certain communities where ideology
trumps pragmatism, but mathematics is ultimately a purer ideology, methinks,
than web-standards-dogma, whence the question.

 

Cheers

David