[atoav]

Care to point us to a better combination than HTML/CSS when it comes to layouting flexible interfaces?

Don't get me wrong, I also could imagine better markup languages for that purpose. But everything I have seen in the wild was worse in multiple, show-stopping ways.

Maybe instead of coming up with a new thing, we just need a clear way to solve the pain points and put the solutions into CSS4 and HTML6

[zero-st4rs]

For layout that privileges text documents with arbitrary length, html is nice.

For interactive interfaces, I think it's not very good.

This page speaks to a different approach (I'm the author) https://skinnyjames.codeberg.page/hokusai/concepts/layouting...

[zackbrown]

> Care to point us to a better combination than HTML/CSS when it comes to layouting flexible interfaces?

HTML/CSS is pretty good!

SwiftUI's HStack and VStack are solid, though they suffer from ambient API complexity & Conway's law.[0]

Figma's autolayout is a strong reference, but it's not a tool for creating software.

> Maybe instead of coming up with a new thing, we just need a clear way to solve the pain points and put the solutions into CSS4 and HTML6

Why not both? Innovate freely and independently (the prerogative of any builder) and adopt as spec any innovations that pass committee.

[0] arguably same diagnosis, different course of disease vs. HTML/CSS

[odo1242]

Flutter’s also very good, though it suffers from the same tradeoffs as SwiftUI

[madeofpalk]

Isn't Figma's "auto layout" just a GUI for a canvas-based implementation of flexbox? Likewise, HStack and VStack are ports of flexbox to SwiftUI.

[zackbrown]

Both Figma autolayout and HStack / VStack are careful subsets of flexbox; not quite the same thing. Consider whether a marble statue is "just a subset" of the block that contained it.

None of these is a perfect technology, but I believe the most practical answer to the question driving this thread[0] is to study/understand the landscape, then build towards a better future.[1]

[0] > Care to point us to a better combination than HTML/CSS when it comes to layouting flexible interfaces?

[1] www.pax.dev

[niutech]

LaTeX or Tagged PDF are better than HTML for document-oriented content.