Table of contents

Appendices

4.5 Line-areas

A line-area is a special type of block-area, and is generated by the same formatting object which generated its parent. Line-areas do not have borders and padding, i.e., border-before-width, padding-before-width, etc. are all zero. Inline-areas are stacked within a line-area relative to a baseline-start-point which is a point determined by the formatter, on the start-edge of the line area's content-rectangle.

The allocation-rectangle of a line is determined by the value of the line-stacking-strategy trait: if the value is font-height, the allocation-rectangle is the nominal-requested-line-rectangle, defined below; if the value is max-height, the allocation-rectangle is the maximum-line-rectangle, defined below; and if the value is line-height, the allocation-rectangle is the per-inline-height-rectangle, defined below. If the line-stacking-strategy trait is font-height or max-height the space-before and space-after are both set to the half-leading value; otherwise they are both set to zero.

The nominal-requested-line-rectangle for a line-area is the rectangle whose start-edge is parallel to the start-edge of the content-rectangle of the nearest ancestor reference-area and offset from it by the sum of the start-indent and the start-intrusion-adjustment of the line area, whose end-edge is parallel to the end-edge of the content-rectangle of the nearest ancestor reference-area and offset from it by the sum of the end-indent and the end-intrusion-adjustment of the line area, whose before-edge is separated from the baseline-start-point by the text-altitude of the parent block-area, and whose after-edge is separated from the baseline-start-point by the text-depth of the parent block-area. It has the same block-progression-dimension for each line-area child of a block-area.

The maximum-line-rectangle for a line-area is the rectangle whose start-edge and end-edge are parallel to and coincident with the start-edge and end-edge of the nominal-requested-line-rectangle, and whose extent in the block-progression-direction is the minimum required to enclose both the nominal-requested-line-rectangle and the allocation-rectangles of all the inline-areas stacked within the line-area; this may vary depending on the descendants of the line-area.

Nominal and Maximum Line Rectangles

The per-inline-height-rectangle for a line-area is the rectangle whose start-edge and end-edge are parallel to and coincident with the start-edge and end-edge of the nominal-requested-line-rectangle, and whose extent in the block-progression-dimension is determined as follows.

The expanded-rectangle of an inline-area is the rectangle with start-edge and end-edge coincident with those of its allocation-rectangle, and whose before-edge and after-edge are outside those of its allocation-rectangle by a distance equal to either (a.) the half-leading, when the area's allocation-rectangle is specified to be the normal-allocation-rectangle by the description of the generating formatting object , or (b.) the space-before and space-after (respectively), when the area's allocation-rectangle is specified to be the large-allocation-rectangle. The expanded-nominal-requested-line-rectangle is the rectangle with start-edge and end-edge coincident with those of the nominal-requested-line-rectangle, and whose before-edge and after-edge are outside those of the nominal-requested-line-rectangle by a distance equal to the half-leading.

The extent of the per-inline-height-rectangle in the block-progression-direction is then defined to be the minimum required to enclose both the expanded-nominal-requested-line-rectangle and the expanded-rectangles of all the inline-areas stacked within the line-area; this may vary depending on the descendants of the line-area.

NOTE: 

Using the nominal-requested-line-rectangle allows equal baseline-to-baseline spacing. Using the maximum-line-rectangle allows constant space between line-areas. Using the per-inline-height-rectangle and zero space-before and space-after allows CSS-style line box stacking. Also, the value of half-leading is included in the expanded-rectangle regardless of conditionality, and thus a line-height conditionality of "discard" does not have effect in this case.