Idiomatic solutions, by definition, cut out the non-semantic document structure. Certainly you will find layouts that cannot be achieved idiomatically in CSS, just as certain software patterns are more idiomatic in one OO language than another (e.g. observer pattern in C# vs Java). But the more scenarios you attempt to address with the language, the more complex it becomes. It's quite possible that extensions to CSS would open it further to the criticism that it's too complex.
Unfortunately, browser vendors do not support any other stylesheet language. Perhaps if this were different, there would be more effort to understand stylesheets from an engineering perspective. Since it's not, we're stuck with poorly-thought conventions and a community that's been trained to despise the language.
CSS is not a happy language, that much I'll agree with. But I find it no more painful than other computer languages. I reassert the lack of rigorous analysis by CSS users and the collective community as the main solvable problem. I have worked at extremely pricey consultancies, and the only thing I learned about CSS from them is that the more senior of a developer you are, the less respect you have toward CSS as an engineerable technology.
Idiomatic solutions, by definition, cut out the non-semantic document structure. Certainly you will find layouts that cannot be achieved idiomatically in CSS, just as certain software patterns are more idiomatic in one OO language than another (e.g. observer pattern in C# vs Java). But the more scenarios you attempt to address with the language, the more complex it becomes. It's quite possible that extensions to CSS would open it further to the criticism that it's too complex.
Unfortunately, browser vendors do not support any other stylesheet language. Perhaps if this were different, there would be more effort to understand stylesheets from an engineering perspective. Since it's not, we're stuck with poorly-thought conventions and a community that's been trained to despise the language.
CSS is not a happy language, that much I'll agree with. But I find it no more painful than other computer languages. I reassert the lack of rigorous analysis by CSS users and the collective community as the main solvable problem. I have worked at extremely pricey consultancies, and the only thing I learned about CSS from them is that the more senior of a developer you are, the less respect you have toward CSS as an engineerable technology.