> In message <199410211853.AA10459@crl.crl.com>, Joe English writes:
> >SUGGESTED RENDERING:
> > CENTER implies a line break before and after the element.
> >IMPACT ON EXISTING IMPLEMENTATIONS:
> > None. Existing browsers can safely ignore the CENTER
> > start- and end- tags; the resulting display will
> > still be a correct rendering of the document content.
>
> This looks contradictory to me.
>
> If a body writes:
>
> <h1> here's some stuff</h1>
> <p> normal para
> <center> centered text</center>
>
> then today's browsers will blur the "centered text" with the "normal
> para".
>
> So it appears that <center> does have impact on existing browsers.
> Deploying new block level elements is somewhat problematic.
Hm.
OK: if %HTML.Recommended; is turned on, then the
example "<p>normal para<center>centered text..."
is illegal to begin with.
With this switch enabled, the content models for
CENTER and DIVISION expand to:
(H1|H2|H3|H4|H5|H6|P|UL|OL|DIR|MENU|DL|PRE|BLOCKQUOTE|FORM|ISINDEX|HR|ADDRESS)*,
all of which also imply line-breaks before and after,
so it looks like this can still work.
Suggested revision: Strike the statement "CENTER implies
a line break..." from the SUGGESTED RENDERING section
(since it's redundant), and add a note to the effect
that:
CENTER may only be used in conjunction with
the recommended HTML 2.0 features. In particular,
this means that CENTER may not directly contain
text (you must use <P> containers instead).
and replace the first sentence of IMPACT ON EXISTING IMPLEMENTATIONS
with:
None, as long as %HTML.Recomended; is also enabled
in the DTD for documents which use this feature.
> Given that, the DIV or DIVISION element seems like a better idea.
I think so too.
--Joe English
jenglish@crl.com