Counter-suggestion: ems are left in (with a clear comment that they may cause
unpredictable results if your stylesheet messes around with multiple point
sizes in the same table). Ems are left in all places that they occur in the
current DTD and added anywhere else that pixels are mentioned but ems are not.
Reason: partially sighted people using large type will want table column widths
to scale up. Specifying column widths in mm, points etc is surely just
hard-coding browser dependencies into the document. People could be using
and screen size from 10 inch to 25 inch and any resolution from 70 to 120
dots per inch - how can you justify putting column widths in real-world units?
Particularly since you talk about conforming to the ICADD model, I would have
thought that the needs of the partially sighted would be considered in this
proposal.
Similarly, I thought putting image sizes in ems so they scale properly as
the surrounding text is scaled was a great idea, and hoped the alternative of
using pixel sizes was for backwards compatibility only. Currently, there is
a bad enough mismatch between inline images designed on a VGA screen and
displayed on a workstation (640x480 -> 1280x1024 or 1536x1280) and vice
versa. The suggestion of using mm, inch etc for image sizes copes with this
problem but then snookers the partially sighted who need to scale everything
up - way up, like 20 or 30 characters on a 19" screen, using auto scrolling
software to read the long lines - and are left with widdy little images
scattered through their large text.
One way around this (which would work for either separate units or the
SGML Open suggested integrated units)would be for browsers to offer a
magnification feature - 2x, 4x, 8x, 16x - and all units (except ems ;-)) would
scale by this as would all text sizes. In that case it should be stated in the
spec that sizes are rendering hints only and may be ignored or over-ridden
by particular browsers.
Comments?
-- Chris Lilley +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Technical Author, Manchester and North HPC Training & Education Centre | +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Computer Graphics Unit, | Email: Chris.Lilley@mcc.ac.uk | | Manchester Computing Centre, | Voice: +44 61 275 6045 | | Oxford Road, | Fax: +44 61 275 6040 | | Manchester, UK. M13 9PL | X400: /I=c /S=lilley | | /O=manchester-computing-centre /PRMD=UK.AC /ADMD= /C=GB/| |<A HREF="http://info.mcc.ac.uk/CGU/staff/lilley/lilley.html">my page</A> | +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ |This is supposed to be data transfer, not artificial intelligence. M VanH| +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+