[ "frame" in XUL splitters ]
It's imported from HTML, by analogy with <frameset>. It has nothing to do with the implementation (as a matter of fact, the two things on the sides of the splitter in XUL are boxes, not frames, and the splitter itself is a frame as well as a box -- that's the implementation).
Well, that's no more accurate than other uses of "frame". The only HTML-like frame in XUL is <iframe>. The content either side of a splitter doesn't have separate-document-status as the content of HTML frames and <iframe> do (a bad analogy). As you say it's at best a box.
However, even HTML's <frame> derives from some more general frame-concept (after which it is named). Does that bring us right back to layout again?
I understood from the tree-like internals of layout that frames can be indicated by leaf or by subtree internal nodes of that structure. Does that mean that "frame-like" layout items do not need to be atomic? My point.
I'm not sure what this paragraph is saying, so I'm not sure how to respond to it....
2nd attempt:
A "frame" (nebulous as it may be) exists in some sense. If one puts several frames together, then a larger thing, effectively a "composite frame" exists in the same sense. Either could underly a given block, box, or CSS box, or the (box) content on one side of a splitter, or the (box) splitter bar itself.
Another way to attack this issue is for me to replace:
'"frame" is a useful teaching concept; please retain it if possible'
with
'Learners want some brief understanding of how boxes/blocks/CSS boxes and dynamic XUL AOM layout features are implemented and maintained. Please advise a useful concept that can be used as a basis for such explainations. Frame has been used in the past.'
Such a request stems from the fact that there is just one layout engine and so learner must suspect that there is some fundamental mechanism at work. Again, a learner's concept of layout is a less specific thing than a specific internal layout library.
But I suspect that change is academic, since frame-like concepts inside layout don't appear to be going away anyway. Only the questions of how exposed they should be to understanding and how suitably or usefully descriptive they are is at issue.
- N.
_______________________________________________ Mozilla-layout mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/mozilla-layout
