> Nearly all layouts people actually want are table-like, and I think CSS really was misguided in its text-flow as layout approach.
I think this is the core misunderstanding in this discussion. CSS 2 supported both text-flow and tabular layout and both layout models were reverse-ingeneered from how Netscape rendered HTML.
There is this weird idea that CSS is somehow opposed to tables or tabular layout, while a significant part of CSS2 is actually the codification of how tables render.
I don’t think there’s much of a misunderstanding here. There are historical reasons why CSS was so weak on layout for so long, but there’s always reasons. To understand what was missing look at what they’ve added (flexbox and grid). I don’t like the implementation of either, but they are in the right space.
I think this is the core misunderstanding in this discussion. CSS 2 supported both text-flow and tabular layout and both layout models were reverse-ingeneered from how Netscape rendered HTML.
There is this weird idea that CSS is somehow opposed to tables or tabular layout, while a significant part of CSS2 is actually the codification of how tables render.