Indented <MENU>s

marca@eit.COM (Marc Andreessen)

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Date: Thu, 17 Feb 1994 13:11:31 --100
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From: marca@eit.COM (Marc Andreessen)
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Subject: Indented <MENU>s
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Paul "S." Wain writes:
> Whilst automatically generating some indented menu's (upto 4 deep) I
> created the following code:
> 
> GB
> <MENU>
> Brunel University
> <MENU>
> Counsellors
> <MENU>
> <BR>
> <A HREF="http://molnir.brunel.ac.uk:4321/...>Dr S Smith</A>
> </MENU>
> <BR>
> Economics
> <MENU>
> <BR>
> <A HREF="http://molnir.brunel.ac.uk:4321/...>Dr J Smith</A>
> </MENU>
> </MENU>
> </MENU>
> 
> Now when viewing this under Lynx I get what I think is the correct
> response:
> 
> ==============================LYNX DISPLAY=======================
>    GB
>    Brunel University
>         Counsellors
>  
>                  [1]Dr S Smith
> 	
> 	Economics
> 
> 		 [2]Dr J Smith
> ==============================LYNX DISPLAY=======================
> 
> *BUT* when I view the same HTML with Mosaic I get:
> 
> ==============================MOSAIC DISPLAY=======================
>    GB 
> 
>       Brunel University 
>           Counsellors 
> 
>              Dr S Smith 
> 
>           Economics 
> 
>              Dr J Smith
> ==============================MOSAIC DISPLAY=======================
> 
> As you can see Mosaic has added in an extra blank line. Am I right in
> assuming that this is infact a bug in the mosaic rendering an that the
> LYNX output is correct.
> 
> If not, how would I go about doing it?

It's not a bug -- it's a rendering choice made by the browser.  As we
kneel before the altar of the "ha ha, you can't control what your
documents look like in HTML" philosophy, you, dear sinner (nay,
blasphemer), can but take solace in the fact that Mosaic is putting a
blank line at the start of all toplevel lists, including yours,
entirely on purpose.  (Why?  Primarily because we thought that looked
the best for most documents on the Web at the time, as I remember.)

What can you do about it?  Probably nothing.  Isn't that cheery news?
I think so.  In fact, it has been a constant source of delight for me
over the past year to get to continually tell hordes (literally) of
people who want to -- strap yourselves in, here it comes -- control
what their documents look like in ways that would be trivial in TeX,
Microsoft Word, and every other common text processing environment:
"Sorry, you're screwed."

Ah well, live and learn.  Or not.

Cheers,
Marc

--
Marc Andreessen
Enterprise Integration Technologies
Palo Alto, California
marca@eit.com