Nigel McFarlane wrote:

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).

This is only the case from a developer's point of view. From a user's point of view, the only thing special about <frame> in HTML is that it gives you these separate viewing areas with a splitter between them....


As you say it's at best a box.

What exactly is your definition of "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?

A frame in real life is just a border around something (eg a picture frame). The something need not have any separateness status, per se (eg you can have frames on a strip of photo film)... So HTML <frame>s are not so named because they load subdocument but because they let you divide the viewing area into several obviously distinct pieces.

2nd attempt:

A "frame" (nebulous as it may be) exists in some sense.

That depends on what one means by "frame". What exactly do you mean when you use that word?


'Learners want some brief understanding of how boxes/blocks/CSS boxes
 and dynamic XUL AOM layout features are implemented and maintained.

So they want to know that these objects have a width/height/padding/border/margin? Anything else would be far from "brief"...


 Please advise a useful concept that can be used as a basis for
 such explainations. Frame has been used in the past.'

The useful concept here is a box as described in the CSS Box Model, imo.


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, XUL layout and non-XUL layout are very very different. You can think of it as two separate layout engines, and that will be a better mental model (though they live in the same layout library).


But I suspect that change is academic, since frame-like concepts

What is a "frame-like concept"?


-Boris

_______________________________________________
Mozilla-layout mailing list
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/mozilla-layout

Reply via email to