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Columnist 3 - Newspaper style text layouts

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZEw6dQ5Ikw

https://www.weavers.space/stacks/columnist

Columnist 3 is a complete rewrite. The bundle now ships three stacks — a text-flow Columnist, a masonry Columnist Grid, and a Columnist Swatch for Foundation integration — plus a suite of editorial features that turn plain markdown into designed editorial spreads.

Three stacks in one bundle

  • Columnist — the main text-flow stack, rewritten from scratch. Drop in markdown, styled text, or child stacks and watch your content flow into responsive columns.

  • Columnist Grid — new masonry-style card grid with lift, grow, and color hover effects. Cards flow in a balanced layout based on content height.

  • Columnist Card — child stack for Grid, with optional per-card style overrides.

  • Columnist Swatch — updated Foundation swatch that emits responsive column styling for any CSS selector.

Editorial styles (all new)

  • Drop caps on the first paragraph, in Simple or Fancy serif style. No markup required.

  • Pull quote blockquotes — a plain markdown > quote becomes a centered, magazine-style pull quote that spans all columns. An inline variant with a side-rule and italic is also available.

  • Span headings — force H1, H1–H2, H1–H3, or all heading levels to span across every column automatically.

  • Horizontal rule ornaments — markdown --- renders as a hairline, asterism (* * *), or floral ornament.

  • Code styling — inline <code> as a subtle pill and fenced <pre> blocks with monospace background, with an optional wide mode that spans all columns for long code.

Typography controls

  • Widow and orphan sliders for column-break protection.

  • Hyphenation (none / manual / auto) for clean column edges.

  • Text-align, text-wrap (balance / pretty), and per-heading break-before / break-after controls.

  • Paragraphs now flow freely across columns so widows and orphans settings actually do their job. Non-paragraph blocks (headings, lists, blockquotes, figures) still honor the Break Inside setting.

  • Manual .colspan class to break any element out of column flow.

Designer-friendly architecture

  • Every setting is exposed as a CSS custom property. Override from your own stylesheet to build themes, respond to dark mode, or integrate with Foundation swatches — no forking required.

  • Native CSS multi-column throughout. Zero JavaScript. No dependencies.

  • Bundle structure uses a product-level updater so RapidWeaver can ship all three stacks together in a single install.

Fixes and refinements

  • Safari column-span ghost rendering mitigated with paint containment on block children.

  • Safari compositor-layer jitter on card hover effects fixed via will-change hint.

  • Horizontal rule ornaments render reliably by using height: min-content and overflow: visible, sidestepping Safari's UA-styled clipping.

  • Drop cap padding swapped for margin to avoid Chrome's ::first-letter quirk.

  • Wide code blocks no longer push mobile column layouts beyond viewport width — min-width: 0 on the container lets multi-column collapse to a single column as designed.

  • Margins around spanning elements handled explicitly so content doesn't slam against pull quotes, ornaments, or wide code blocks.

Upgrade notes

Existing Columnist owners can pick up Columnist 3 at a discounted price: weavers.space/stacks/columnist

Projects built with Columnist v1 or v2 will need to recreate their stack instances using the new stacks — the identifiers and settings have changed substantially.

Check out Columnist at https://www.weavers.space/stacks/columnist

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