[css-display] Define how display: contents behaves in MathML.

[emilio]

https://drafts.csswg.org/css-display/#unbox defines how display: contents behaves for unusual HTML elements and for SVG elements, but not MathML.

It'd be nice to define how they should behave, even if it's just "it behaves normally".

[tabatkins]

From my reading of MathML3, there's approximately zero elements where it makes sense to use display:contents, so for now I'm defining that it is treated as "display: none" for all of them.

[frivoal]

Randomly pulling in someone who ought to know a thing or two about MathML: @pkra, what do you think about the above?

[fred-wang]

I discussed this a bit at Igalia. Here is a concrete example:

<math>
  <mfrac>
    <mrow style="background: green; color: red; display: contents">
      <mi>x</mi>
      <mo>+</mo>
      <mi>y</mi>
    </mrow>
    <mn>2</mn>
  </mfrac>
</math>

WebKit and Gecko currently ignore "display: contents" so you will see the fraction numerator with green background.

If instead you treat "display: contents" as "display: none" then it will look like this:

<math>
  <mfrac>
    <mrow style="display: none">
      <mi>x</mi>
      <mo>+</mo>
      <mi>y</mi>
    </mrow>
    <mn>2</mn>
  </mfrac>
</math>

Gecko and WebKit don't create a box for the numerator and so the fraction is rendered as invalid markup (WebKit actually displays nothing because of https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=123348) which is different from the current implementation of display: contents. I guess it's easy to implement, just say "display: none" won't create layout/renderer classes and the MathML code will take care of the rest.

Another option is to basically "ignore the math layout" so

<math>
  <mfrac style="background: green; color: red; display: contents">
    <mi>x</mi>
    <mi>y</mi>
  </mfrac>
</math>

is treated as just

<math>
  <mi style="color: red;">x</mi>
  <mi style="color: red;">y</mi>
</math>

with the fraction and background ignored. But things might become more complicated to understand and implement (the first example would be treated as a fraction with 4 elements so invalid) and it's not clear whether there is a concrete use case in practice.

Note that we already have similiar situations like borders or absolute positioning where Gecko or WebKit just ignore CSS properties or choose the option that is the most convenient for implementers. So it seems either keeping "display: content" as it (i.e. ignoring it in MathML element) or changing implementations to match "display: none" is the most appropriate option for MathML.

@emilio: What is your opinion on this? What will be the easiest for Mozilla?

[MatsPalmgren]

Handling it as display: none seems like the best option to me. It should be easy to implement for us since display: none is already supported.

[tabatkins]

Gecko and WebKit don't create a box for the numerator and so the fraction is rendered as invalid markup

With it acting as display:none, the fraction is invalid because there's only one argument. With it acting as display:contents, the fraction would also be invalid, because there's 4 arguments.

This sort of thing abounds in MathML; every place I saw where I thought display:contents might make sense, it would just as often make things invalid, too. This sort of consideration doesn't apply to HTML's or SVG's rules.

The closest thing we could get to the intent of display:contents would be something like "treat it like an unstyled mrow instead", but that's both complicated (and I don't think it'll work everywhere) and more importantly, not what display:contents does.

So yeah, absent the WG deciding on something totally different, display:none for everything seems best. ^_^

[pkra]

Randomly pulling in someone who ought to know a thing or two about MathML: @pkra, what do you think about the above?

I don't know anyone relying on native MathML implementations in a professional production setting (I haven't checked crawler data in a while but it usually confirms this quite broadly). Mixing MathML and CSS is extremely rare in general since MathML usually serves in XML-to-print workflows as well.

So whatever is easiest seems very reasonable.

[css-meeting-bot]

The Working Group just discussed ] 'display: contents' on MathML, and agreed to the following resolutions:

• RESOLVED: treating display:contents as display:none for MathML

The full IRC log of that discussion

<dael_> Topic: ] 'display: contents' on MathML
<dael_> : https://.com//issues/2167
<dael_> TabAtkins: We have special ruels for how display:content should work in SVG. [missed]
<dael_> TabAtkins: How to handle display:contents a few elements treat it like HTML, ones with a transparent content model. Everything else is treated as display:none because children can't be rendered one level up. Looking at mathML there are 0 instances where children can be rendered in outer context.
<dael_> TabAtkins: It would almost never be correct to lift children to outer context. There are a few places where it's right with only a certain number of children. Best thing I can see is make it always display:none on MathML. Firefox des were fine.
<florian> +1
<dael_> astearns: Given other times we said display:contents are handled as display:none and how well they went over I expect this to come up again.
<dael_> TabAtkins: If someone can point to a mathML fucntion where it makes sense we can change this.
<dael_> fantasai: We'll CC mathML WG when we publish a WD
<dael_> florian: And we CCed some MathML people along the way.
<dael_> astearns: You want to talk to math on the web group
<dael_> astearns: Obj ot treating display:contents as display:none for MathML?
<dael_> RESOLVED: treating display:contents as display:none for MathML
<dael_> Topic