html css flexbox css-grid css-multicolumn-layout

How to break the newspaper style 3 column layout in CSS?

I have a following requirement to design the print layout to generate a pdf and I've tried various options including CSS flex and grid but not much success.

The requirement is:

Show the content in 3-page colum layout - similar to newspaper style.
If a column holds too much information then it would ‘flow’ into the next column on the right hand side.
Once we reached the 3 column limit, then the 4th column should move to the next row instead of the column (as in, the next page). Also, we do not know how many columns or rows in total.

I'm able to achieve the first requirement. However, I couldn't find a way to break the 3rd column in CSS based on the div width (or page width).

I'm trying the below code:

.newspaper {
  max-height: 500px;
   column-count: 3; 
  
}
.article {
  break-inside: avoid;
  page-break-after: always;        
}
.chart {
  background: #ccc;
  height: 200px;
}

 <div class="newspaper">
      <div class="article">
        <h1>Article 1</h1>
        <div class="chart">Chart 1</div>
        <p>
          Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet
          dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper
          suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.
        </p>
        <p>
          Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet
          dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper
          suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.
        </p>
        <p>
          Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet
          dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper
          suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.
        </p>
        <p>xxxxxxxxxx</p>
      </div>
      <div class="article">
        <h1>Article 2</h1>
        <div class="chart">Chart 2</div>
        <p>
          Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet
          dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper
          suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.
        </p>
        <p>
          Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet
          dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper
          suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.
        </p>
        <p>xxxxxxxxxx</p>
      </div>
      <div class="article">
        <h1>Article 3</h1>
        <div class="chart">Chart 3</div>
        <p>
          Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet
          dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper
          suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.
        </p>
      </div>

      <div class="article">
        <h1>Article 4</h1>
        <div class="chart">Chart 4</div>
        <p>
          Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet
          dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper
          suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.
        </p>
      </div>
      <div class="article">
        <h1>Article 5</h1>
        <div class="chart">Chart 5</div>
        <p>
          Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet
          dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper
          suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.
        </p>
      </div>
      <div class="article">
        <h1>Article 6</h1>
        <div class="chart">Chart 6</div>
        <p>
          Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet
          dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper
          suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.
        </p>
      </div>
      <div class="article">
        <h1>Article 7</h1>
        <div class="chart">Chart 7</div>
        <p>
          Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet
          dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper
          suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.
        </p>
      </div>
    </div>

Expected Output:

I'm happy with any CSS approach as long as it works on Chrome.

Thanks.

Solution

Beware: this is a quick and dirty hack that isn't recommended for use in web development, as it makes a copy of the entire document for every page it creates. The scope of the question however seems to be a private tool that creates PDFs out of HTML. For that use case I deem this trick suitable. It meets al your criteria, even across pages and is responsive.

Why a trick?

As mentioned by others, CSS does currently not provide for an automated way to break columns up in rows and flow the text across them. display: grid does something related but keeps boxes intact meaning that elements cannot flow in one uninterrupted stream across the page. flow-into and flow-from seem promising but are not implemented in your preferred environment (Chrome) yet.

The trick

This setup breaks your entire content up in columns using the columns property, but only displays three of them using a container with overflow: hidden. When the page is loaded a piece of javascript then measures the container size, compares that to the scroll overflow to determine how many pages of content are hidden and creates copies accordingly, each having an offset to only display the next three items. So although every pages contains the entire document, the result is the illusion of articles freely flowing along pages.

The dimensions are configurable using the variables in the .pages ruleset. Further stylistic customization might need some tinkering given the hacky nature of this approach.

window.addEventListener("load", reflowPages);
window.addEventListener("resize", reflowPages);

function reflowPages() {
  const pages = document.querySelector(".pages");
  const template = document.querySelector(".page");
  if (pages == null || template == null) return;

  const viewportWidth = template.clientWidth;
  const totalWidth = template.scrollWidth;
  const pageCount = Math.ceil(totalWidth / viewportWidth);

  cleanPages();
  for (let n = 1; n < pageCount; n++) {
    const page = createPage(template, n);
    pages.appendChild(page);
  }
}

function cleanPages() {
  const [, ...rest] = document.querySelectorAll(".page");
  rest.forEach((v) => v.remove());
}

function createPage(template, n) {
  const element = template.cloneNode(true);
  element.style.setProperty("--page", n);
  return element;
}

.pages {
  --page-width: 100%;
  --page-height: 500px;
  --columns: 3;
}

.page {
  width: var(--page-width);
  height: var(--page-height);
  overflow: hidden;
  border-bottom: 1px solid black;
  padding: 1em 0;
}

.scroller {
  position: relative;
  max-height: 100%;
  column-count: var(--columns);
  column-gap: 0;
  left: calc(var(--page, 0) * -100%);
}

.article {
  padding: 0 0.5em;
  /* Instead of column-gap */
}

.chart {
  background: #ccc;
  height: 200px;
  break-inside: avoid;
}

<div class="pages">
  <div class="page">
    <div class="scroller">
      <div class="article">
        <h1>Article 1</h1>
        <div class="chart">Chart 1</div>
        <p>
          Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex
          ea commodo consequat.
        </p>
        <p>
          Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex
          ea commodo consequat.
        </p>
        <p>
          Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex
          ea commodo consequat.
        </p>
        <p>xxxxxxxxxx</p>
      </div>
      <div class="article">
        <h1>Article 2</h1>
        <div class="chart">Chart 2</div>
        <p>
          Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex
          ea commodo consequat.
        </p>
        <p>
          Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex
          ea commodo consequat.
        </p>
        <p>xxxxxxxxxx</p>
      </div>
      <div class="article">
        <h1>Article 3</h1>
        <div class="chart">Chart 3</div>
        <p>
          Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex
          ea commodo consequat.
        </p>
      </div>

      <div class="article">
        <h1>Article 4</h1>
        <div class="chart">Chart 4</div>
        <p>
          Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex
          ea commodo consequat.
        </p>
      </div>
      <div class="article">
        <h1>Article 5</h1>
        <div class="chart">Chart 5</div>
        <p>
          Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex
          ea commodo consequat.
        </p>
      </div>
      <div class="article">
        <h1>Article 6</h1>
        <div class="chart">Chart 6</div>
        <p>
          Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex
          ea commodo consequat.
        </p>
      </div>
      <div class="article">
        <h1>Article 7</h1>
        <div class="chart">Chart 7</div>
        <p>
          Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex
          ea commodo consequat.
        </p>
      </div>
    </div>
  </div>
</div>

Drawbacks / limitations

This may not be very performant depending on the size of your document, but as stated earlier that may be acceptable for your use case.
column-gap messes with the calculations and you should therefore use padding on the child elements instead (as in the example)
Given multiple pages, the bottom .page will always be stretched to the max height by the invisible overflowing elements.