position:absolute doesn't work for tables

[barotto]

Opening this issue following a discussion on gitter.

When an element with display:table; also has position:absolute; then any children element with table-related display values like table-row or table-cell inside of it will generate the following error:

Element has a display type 'table-row', but is not located in a table. It will not be formatted.

I don't have much experience with the source code, but this problem appears to happen because when a table has absolute position it's added as such in the block_context_box object at LayoutEngine.cpp:157 but the LayoutTable::FormatTable() function won't be called in the CloseAbsoluteElements() called at LayoutEngine.cpp:94

As a workaround you can put a table inside a div element set with position:absolute;

[mikke89]

Thanks! I figured this also happens with floated tables.

You're on the right track there. I managed to hack some solution together, but really it needs some more structural changes to handle this properly. And I don't think it's worth spending too much time on that right now. Instead, I figured the best course of action is to warn and provide the suggested workaround to the user.

[mikke89]

I'm closing this for now with the improved warnings and workarounds. I suspect this might be an issue with flexboxes as well when they are ready, so we might want to revisit this issue then for a proper fix.