simple HTML list considered harmful

marca@ncsa.uiuc.edu (Marc Andreessen)
Date: Tue, 28 Sep 93 21:02:45 -0500
From: marca@ncsa.uiuc.edu (Marc Andreessen)
Message-id: <9309290202.AA08157@wintermute.ncsa.uiuc.edu>
To: kevin@scic.intel.com (Kevin Altis)
Cc: www-talk@nxoc01.cern.ch
Subject: simple HTML list considered harmful
In-reply-to: <9309282309.AA13230@rs042.scic.intel.com>
References: <9309282309.AA13230@rs042.scic.intel.com>
X-Md4-Signature: 0a4b57fe9a474fc77f958ae62a56bae8
Kevin Altis writes:
> Well, I don't know how I managed to write so much HTML without coming
> across this problem before, but I ran into the following today. I wanted to
> have a simple block of text, I'll use an address as an example:
> 
> First Last
> Address line 1
> Address line 2
> City, State, Zip
> Phone
> Fax
> email
> 
> I wanted the lines to appear exactly as above. If I used a <P> at the end
> of each line, I would get unwanted leading between lines. If I use the
> <PRE> tag then the text would have to appear in a monospaced typeface. If I
> used the <UL>, <OL>, <MENU>... lists then I get bullets or numbers in front
> of the lines. If I did something like:
> 
> <DL>
> <DD>First Last
> <DD>Address line 1
> ...
> </DL>
> 
> then the text gets indented. So, the STUPID QUESTION of the day is how can
> I make a simple list of left aligned lines without extra leading between
> lines or bullets or line numbers or indents or being forced to use a
> monospaced font? This seems like it should be a fairly common thing to do
> and shouldn't require anything more complicated the paragraph tag or list
> tags. I should also be able to put in whatever emphasis I want for each
> line or for each word in the line.

Coming soon: the <BR> (line break) tag.

In the meantime, in Mosaic for X you can do:

<DL>
<DT>First Last
<DT>Address line 1
...
</DL>

Cheers,
Marc

--
Marc Andreessen
Software Development Group
National Center for Supercomputing Applications
marca@ncsa.uiuc.edu