Re: Whitespace

lentz@rossi.astro.nwu.edu (Robert Lentz)

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From: lentz@rossi.astro.nwu.edu (Robert Lentz)
Message-id: <9401131813.AA07810@rossi.astro.nwu.edu>
Subject: Re: Whitespace
To: www-talk@www0.cern.ch
Date: Thu, 13 Jan 1994 12:13:22 -0600 (CST)
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Hello,
	All this talk about HTML not being a layout language always
frustrates me. We must realize that it does have some layout capabilities,
and should (especially in aligning text wrt graphics). In fact, great
frustration has been derived from how it forces one to accept certain layout
characteristics: the way headers have and implicit <p> which cannot be
overridden, thus if I want to subtitle something, I either have to do it
within the same header tag, or have it be substantially separated from the
main title. With <p> and <br> it would be nice if we were allowed the
freedom to decide all breaks and paragraph spacing ourselves.

	Another example is the <address> tag. I once wanted to include an
email address in a document, and tried tagging it according to type, but
much to my consternation found that the <address> tag then forced a <br> in
my document.

	If we really want to emphasize content type we probably really need
an <net-address> or <address type=net,mail,etc> tag/attribute, especially
for sending authors email from within the clients.

	My biggest beef has been not being able to use headers within lists.
I was thus encouraged to just work around it by using <b>, and thus my
documents are not as well "content labelled" as they would be if HTML were
more flexible. Or will "content parsers" treat levels of lists as different
levels of headers? (Can we hint that browsers should at least do this in
their presentations?)

	HTML+ will give us a big chance if we see things that need to be
"clarified". Anything wihtout the proper Doctype could be interpreted based
upon the old rules.

	Not as neatly stated as I would like, but I think it gets my point
across.

-Robert Lentz
-- 
lentz@rossi.astro.nwu.edu            http://www.astro.nwu.edu/lentz/plan.html
	"You have to push as hard as the age that pushes against you."
					-Flannery O'Connor