I believe the thrust of the debate in this thread is whether "flex" should be its own set of properties (and display value) or should it be a unit of measure.

I don't think Andrew meant that authors would not be able to use floats or tables for layout if we really wanted to. His point seemed to be that flex could add a new way to do certain types of layout that previously might have been done with floats or tables, and I find no fault with that idea. I don't think the concept of "flex" as a measurement unit should be attacked just because authors may choose to continue to use floats in ways they found advantageous over flex.

There are still many authors who find tables to be the easiest way to achieve their layout needs, and who find it awkward and difficult trying to do the same thing with floats and negative margin, or absolute positioning. You don't have to agree with those authors' choices. If flex, in whatever form, can provide a new, simpler way to achieve the same layout ends then shouldn't we, as authors, welcome that? Can we not attack Andrew for suggesting that flex can help with layout problems that many people use tables or floats to do now? Maybe he overstated the scope of how much floats would be rendered irrelevant, but his basic point of its usefulness is sound. I think we all agree without argument that floats will not be going away any time soon, and that if there are ambiguities to "block formating context" that they should be resolved. Let's try to keep this thread focused on how flex should be defined and implemented.

On Jun 7, 2008, at 7:48 AM, Alan Gresley wrote:

This is an important point that Andrew made. In his 3-year experience with flexes, he dealt with some challenges in how they interact with other rules, etc., but those challenges were all met and implemented in a way that did not go outside of what CSS allows and encourages.

Of course that is not true. CSS defines many constraints. It must. For instance, when I specify a color, I am constrained to use the color- specification models that CSS allows. I cannot just say { color:watermelon }, because I must operate within the constraints of how CSS defines color values.

That really sounds like a personal attack against Andrew, and is uncalled for. Lets limit our arguments to be for or against the proposals, and not against the person.