So far, layout has been an unstructured process, with each tag just directly modifying state like the current x and y position. That's an appropriate way to lay out text, but gets cumbersome as we add more and more layout features. Plus, it’s patently unsuited for handling things like borders and margins. This chapter describes a better way to do layout.

Inline layout

The way layout works now, every time we lay out an element, we first modify the state (in layout_open), then lay out each child, and then modify the state again (in layout_close). The actual measurements of each element (like their height and width) don’t exist as data; you can only glimpse them by watching the pattern of state modifications.

Well, that works for simple layouts, but it’s pretty hard to draw a border without knowing how wide and tall to draw the border.

So web browsers actually structure layout differently. In a browser, the job of layout is to produce a tree, called the box tree, so that each element has an associated box and each box is annotated with a size and a position. When you lay out text, you do so relative to the box the element is contained in.

Our layout function doesn't do this yet, so let’s fix it.

Let’s start by defining a data structure to store an area where text can be laid out. I'm going to call this a Block:

class Block:
    def __init__(self, x, y, w):
        self.x = x
        self.y = y
        self.w = w

Now I'm going to rearrange the layout functions into a class called InlineLayout, which will sort of combine the three layout functions and the State class together:

class InlineLayout:
    def __init__(self, block):
        self.parent = block
        self.x = block.x
        self.y = block.y
        self.bold = False
        self.italic = False
        self.terminal_space = True
        self.dl = []

Here, the parent field will point to a block data structure from above, which will define the area where text will be placed.

The layout function will become a method in this class:

class InlineLayout:
    # ...
    def layout(self, node):
        if isinstance(node, ElementNode):
            self.open(node)
            for child in node.children:
                self.layout(child)
            self.close(node)
        else:
            self.text(node)

The open, close, and text methods will be the similarly-named functions from the previous lab. Just make sure to replace all references to the parts of state with references to self.Be careful with this. Python in particular will not warn you if you assign to an undeclared variable, because it has no notion of variable declaration as separate from assignment!

As we’re doing this, we need to update the hard-coded constants that used to define the page boundaries with references to parent. So instead of…

if self.x + w > 787:
    self.x = 13
    self.y += font.metrics('linespace') * 1.2

… we now now want to reset self.x not to 13 but to the left edge of the block that we are doing layout inside of; and likewise the right hand edge is no longer 787 but instead self.parent.x + self.parent.w:

if self.x + w > self.parent.x + self.parent.w:
    self.x = self.parent.x
    self.y += font.metrics('linespace') * 1.2

You should be able to use InlineLayout in show by creating a Block representing the page and then laying out to it:

page = Block(13, 13, 774)
layout = InlineLayout(page)
layout.layout(nodes)
display_list = layout.dl

Layout uses its block parent as an input, to define where text should go, but that block is also an output, since we only discover how tall a block of text is during inline layout. So at the end of layout, let’s set the h field on the InlineLayout to define its height:

font = self.font()
last_line = font.metrics('linespace') * 1.2
self.h = (self.y + last_line) - self.parent.y

Here the height is computed by taking the bottom of the laid out text (using self.y for its top and adding its height) and subtracting the place where we started laying out text. Note that I'm calling a new helper function self.font to compute the current font, setting the weight and slant properly.

We can make use of this height in show to stop users from scrolling past the bottom of the page. First, store the height in the maxh variable:

maxh = layout.h

Then, when the user scrolls down, we won't let them scroll past the bottom of the page:

def scrolldown(e):
    nonlocal scrolly
    scrolly = min(scrolly + SCROLL_STEP, 13 + maxh - 600)
    render()

Here, the 13 accounts for the 13 pixels of padding we have at the beginning of the page and the 600 is the height of the screen.

Block layout

InlineLayout is good for laying out lines of text, but what about paragraphs of text, with succeeding paragraphs stacked vertically atop each other? The current code treats paragraphs as just part of the general left-to-right line-oriented layout method, which does’t make much sense. Instead it makes sense to treat paragraphs as separate InlineLayout contexts that later get vertically stacked.

To do that, I'm going to rename Block to BlockLayout, and it’ll be a separate layout mode, which is intended for things like paragraphs and headings. Block layouts will have multiple children, so we'll add fields for children and parents.

class BlockLayout:
    def __init__(self, parent, node):
        self.parent = parent
        self.children = []
        self.node = node
        self.x = 13
        self.y = 13
        self.w = 774

For now, I’m hard-coding the x, y, and w values in the constructor from the parent, but that’ll eventually change.

We'll have a layout function for BlockLayoutto lay out blocks vertically one after another. You might write it like this:

class BlockLayout
    def layout(self):
        y = self.y
        for child in node.children:
            layout = BlockLayout(self, child)
            self.children.append(layout)
            layout.layout(y)
            y += layout.h

This isn't too far off conceptually, but there are a bunch of flaws:

• We don’t set the h field, so we can’t use it yet;
• We're passing the child y position to the layout function, which doesn't expect that input;
• Now we're only ever using BlockLayout and never calling InlineLayout;
• TextNode has no children field, but this layout method will eventually reach a TextNode and crash.

Let's fix these one by one. First, the height. At the end of BlockLayout.layout we know the current y position, and it is after every child node's layout, so we just use that to change the value of self.h:

def layout(self, y):
    # ...
    self.h = y - self.y

Second, the y argument. Let's add a y parameter to layout function and use that to set self.y:

def layout(self, y):
    self.y = y
    # ...

That also lets us remove the hard-coded assignment to self.y in __init__, and while we’re at it, let’s change self.x and self.w to not be hard-coded:

def __init__(self, parent):
    # ...
    self.x = self.parent.x
    self.y = self.parent.y

Since we’re now looking for data in the parent, let’s add a new type of node to be the root node:

class Page:
    def __init__(self):
        self.x = 13
        self.y = 13
        self.w = 774
        self.children = []

Third and fourth, we need to call InlineLayout to handle TextNodes, plus the ElementNodes that are supposed to be inline, like <b> and <i>. The idea is that instead using BlockLayout to lay out each child node, we'll look to see what that node contains. If it contains a TextNode, or if contains a <b> or <i> element, it will be laid out with InlineLayout instead:

def is_inline(node):
    if isinstance(node, TextNode):
        return true
    else:
        return node.tag in ["b", "i"]

def layout(self, y):
    self.y = y
    if any(is_inline(child) for child in node.children):
        layout = InlineLayout(self)
        self.children.append(layout)
        layout.layout(node)
        y += layout.height()
    else:
        # ...

Let's try it out. We'll need to tweak show:

page = Page()
layout = BlockLayout(page)
layout.layout(nodes)
maxh = layout.h
display_list = layout.display_list()

Here I'm calling layout.display_list() instead of directly accessing layout.dl, because display lists will be computed differently for InlineLayout and BlockLayout. On an InlineLayout that function should just return the dl field, and on a BlockLayout it should concatenate all its childrens' display lists:I'm trying to avoid fancy Python features where possible, but if your language supports iterators it makes a lot of sense to return an iterator from display_list instead of a list. That will also avoid a lot of copying.

def display_list(self):
    dl = []
    for child in self.children:
        dl.extend(child.display_list())
    return dl

If you run this, you'll find that everything is laid out in one giant paragraph, despite all our work putting each paragraph in its own ElementNode. That's because most elements have an all-whitespace TextNode; that causes those elements to be laid out with InlineLayout. A small tweak to is_inline will mostly fix it:

if isinstance(node, TextNode):
    return not node.text.isspace()
# ...

We'll also need to skip these empty TextNode objects when we create layouts for each child of a block:

for child in node.children:
    if isinstance(child, TextNode): continue
    # ...

You should see now see paragraphs vertically stacked, and headings should now automatically take up their own lines, as should list items, code snippets, and every other element of that sort.

One thing we lost with this big layout refactor, though, is the blank line between paragraphs. Let's add it back.

The box model

Let's add support for margins, borders, and padding, which are the main ways you change the position of block layout elements. Here's how those work. In effect, every block element has four rectangles associated with it: the margin rectangle, the border rectangle, the padding rectangle, and the content rectangle:

The margin, border, and padding, gives the width of the gap between each of these rectangles. Margin, border, and padding can be different on each side of the block). That makes for a lot of variables:

class BlockLayout:
    def __init__(self, parent, node):
        # ....
        self.mt = self.mr = self.mb = self.ml = 0
        self.bt = self.br = self.bb = self.bl = 0
        self.pt = self.pr = self.pb = self.pl = 0

The naming convention here is that the first letter stands for margin, border, or padding, while the second letter stands for top, right, bottom, or left. Let’s stick with the convention that the x and y fields on a layout object represent the top right of the border rectangle, so that the top margin goes above self.y, and likewise for the left margin, but the top and left borders and padding are below and to the right of self.y and self.x. Similarly, self.w and self.h should give the width and height of the border rectangle. We can add helper functions to get some other useful sizes:

def content_left(self):
    return self.x + self.bl + self.pl
def content_top(self):
    return self.y + self.bt + self.pt
def content_width(self):
    return self.w - self.bl - self.br - self.pl - self.pr

We'll now need to take a look at every place we use these variables and add the appropriate padding, margin, or border:

• In the BlockLayout constructor, instead of using parent.x for self.x, we'll use parent.content_left().
• In the BlockLayout constructor, instead of using parent.w for self.w, we'll use parent.content_width().
• In BlockLayout.layout, we'll want to add top and left margins to self.x and self.y, and subtract left and right margins from self.w.
• In BlockLayout.layout, we'll need to add the vertical padding and border to the y variable after laying out all of the children.
• In the InlineLayout constructor, instead of using block.x and block.y, we'll use block.content_left() and block.content_top().
• In InlineLayout.text, we'll use block.content_left() and block.content_top().

We'll also want to modify BlockLayout.layout to insert vertical margins between the children that it lays out:

y += layout.height() + layout.mt + layout.mb

Note that InlineLayout does not have margin fields, but that's OK because every InlineLayout is safely hidden inside a BlockLayout.

Right now, all of these changes are useless since all of the fields are set to 0. Let's add code to the top of BlockLayout.layout to set those fields:

if node.tag == "p":
    self.mb = 16
elif node.tag == "ul":
    self.mt = self.mb = 16
    self.pl = 20
elif node.tag == "li":
    self.mb = 8

You should now see blanks between paragraphs, and list items (like in a table of contents) should be indented.

One more stop: let’s actually draw the borders. That means drawing lines (one per border) or, more precisely, rectangles (since the borders have width). That's going to mean extending the display list to draw both rectangles and text. Let's create some data structures for that.

class DrawText:
    def __init__(self, x, y, text, font):
        self.x = x
        self.y = y
        self.text = text
        self.font = font

    def draw(self, scrolly, canvas):
        canvas.create_text(
            self.x, self.y - scrolly,
            text=self.text,
            font=self.font,
            anchor='nw',
        )

class DrawRect:
    def __init__(self, x1, y1, x2, y2):
        self.x1 = x1
        self.y1 = y1
        self.x2 = x2
        self.y2 = y2

    def draw(self, scrolly, canvas):
        canvas.create_rectangle(
            self.x1, self.y1 - scrolly,
            self.x2, self.y2 - scrolly,
            width=0,
            fill="black",
        )

Here I've passed width=0 to create_rectangle, because otherwise create_rectangle would draw a one-pixel black border.

Now InlineLayout.layout will create DrawText objects, while BlockLayout.display_list will create DrawRect objects for the borders.

def display_list(self):
    dl = []
    # ...
    _ol, _ot = self.x, self.y
    _or, _ob = _ol + self.w, _ot + self.h
    _il, _it = _ol + self.bl, _ot + self.bt
    _ir, _ib = _or - self.br, _ob - self.bb
    if self.bl: dl.append(DrawRect(_ol, _ot, _il, _ob))
    if self.br: dl.append(DrawRect(_ir, _ot, _or, _ob))
    if self.bt: dl.append(DrawRect(_ol, _ot, _or, _it))
    if self.bb: dl.append(DrawRect(_ol, _ib, _or, _ob))
    return dl

Here I define the variables _ol, _il, _ot, _it, _or, _ir, _ob, and _ib for the outer and inner left, top, right, and bottom coordinates. The underscore is because otherwise or would conflict with a keyword.

Finally, when we use the display list, we'll now just call draw on each command in the display list:

def render():
    canvas.delete("all")
    for cmd in display_list:
        cmd.draw(scrolly, canvas)

This setup also makes it fairly easy to change the appearance of elements. For example, a few lines will indent code blocks 8 pixels, surround them with a one pixel border, and then add another 8 pixels between the border and the code itself:

elif node.tag == "pre":
    self.mr = self.ml = 8
    self.bt = self.br = self.bb = self.bl = 1
    self.pt = self.pr = self.pb = self.pl = 8

Summary

In this chapter, we did a pretty dramatic rewrite of the layout portion of our browser. We've split layout into two different layout modes for block and inline content, and we've extended the styling capabilities of our browser by adding margins, border, and padding.

Assignments

• Remove the magic numbers from the Page object by instead assigning padding to the <body> element
• Add bullets to list items, which in HTML are <li> tags. You can make them little squares, located to the left of the list item itself.
• Add support for background colors and border colors. Code blocks (<pre> tags) should have light-gray background color, while headings (<h2> tags) should have light-gray bottom borders, or some other colors you like better. Make sure background colors are located behind the text, not in front of it!
• Implement margin collapsing. In margin collapsing, when one block has a bottom margin and the next block has a top margin, the actual gap between them is the larger of the two margins, not their sum.
• Extend margin collapsing to allow the top (bottom) margin of an element to overlap with the top (bottom) margin of its first (last) child, as long as it has no top (bottom) border or padding.