[css-grid-3][masonry] merge masonry-auto-flow into grid-auto-flow?

[fantasai]

The masonry-auto-flow property does something similar to grid-auto-flow; should we merge these two properties?

• https://drafts.csswg.org/css-grid-3/#masonry-auto-flow
• https://www.w3.org/TR/css-grid-2/#grid-auto-flow-property

[SelenIT]

There was once an idea to use the special grid-auto-flow value as the only masonry switch, with no extra values to grid-*-template and no extra properties at all. Maybe it could be worth reconsidering?

[fantasai]

If we drop definite-first (#10260) and we drop next (#10232) then we can just drop the property entirely.

[tabatkins]

These shouldn't be merged, imo. They're doing the same things, conceptually, but have a totally different set of controls for those things. We'd just have two divergent syntax branches, with one useful only for Grid and the other useful only for Masonry; we'd have to define default behavior for if you used the wrong set of keywords. That doesn't suggest they're actually useful to be in the same property.

(This is ignoring the larger issue about Masonry being a different display type in the first place; regardless of that, I think they're still best as separate properties. But if it is a separate display type, they're clearly best as separate properties imo.)

(But also, as you say, we can just drop the property entirely if we switch over to masonry-threshold, since we have already dropped the definite-first switch.)

[css-meeting-bot]

The CSS Working Group just discussed [css-grid-3][masonry] merge masonry-auto-flow into grid-auto-flow?, and agreed to the following:

• RESOLVED: Drop masonry-auto-flow

The full IRC log of that discussion

<flackr> fantasai: now that we've dropped the definite value and the next value, there's nothing for masonry-auto-flow to do, so propose dropping property altogether
<TabAtkins> I like a property with no choice in its syntax. `Value: foo bar` , no | anywhere, perfection
<flackr> astearns: any concerns about dropping masonry-auto-flow?
<flackr> astearns: objections?
<flackr> RESOLVED: Drop masonry-auto-flow