> Hard not to laugh out loud at "We know what good syntax for templating looks like." We don't. Not even close. Because I'd hazard a good template is almost certainly more of a visual thing than it is a symbolic one.
How do you come to this conclusion? It seems to me that what you mean is a general gripe with HTML+CSS, not with how it's generated.
And why do you bring up absolute positioning?
I hear this take on HN again and again and sure, absolute positioning has its place, and is needed for many things.
But when it's used for page/app layout, most of the time I came across this it was an absolute nightmare, falling apart at the slightest content (even text!) or screen size changes.
Even print newspaper layout can't work like this, because typography is involved, although it's probably a lot closer to what I imagine you are describing.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding you.
But when I was doing more CSS-intensive work (I still do a fair bit), developing something on a basis when someone created a layout based on absolute positioning that looked like it was "almost ready", it was a terrible time sink to try to fix it and recreating it using flex, flow et al for layout (I'm not that fond of grid outside of some scenarios, and at the time I didn't use it due to browser support) was always faster because the problems with absolute positioning as the main layout tool were basically unfixable.
Maybe there are techniques using calc() and viewport units where it makes sense, but absolute positioning is not suitable for any layout outside of completely static content and viewport dimensions, in my experience.
How do you come to this conclusion? It seems to me that what you mean is a general gripe with HTML+CSS, not with how it's generated.
And why do you bring up absolute positioning?
I hear this take on HN again and again and sure, absolute positioning has its place, and is needed for many things.
But when it's used for page/app layout, most of the time I came across this it was an absolute nightmare, falling apart at the slightest content (even text!) or screen size changes.
Even print newspaper layout can't work like this, because typography is involved, although it's probably a lot closer to what I imagine you are describing.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding you.
But when I was doing more CSS-intensive work (I still do a fair bit), developing something on a basis when someone created a layout based on absolute positioning that looked like it was "almost ready", it was a terrible time sink to try to fix it and recreating it using flex, flow et al for layout (I'm not that fond of grid outside of some scenarios, and at the time I didn't use it due to browser support) was always faster because the problems with absolute positioning as the main layout tool were basically unfixable.
Maybe there are techniques using calc() and viewport units where it makes sense, but absolute positioning is not suitable for any layout outside of completely static content and viewport dimensions, in my experience.