Re: space

Chris Lilley <Chris.Lilley@sophia.inria.fr> wrote:
>On Sep 23,  2:43am, Walter Ian Kaye wrote:
>
>> [about ISOpub entities]
>
>> None of those are usable for computer source code, however. In source
>> code, a specific number of space characters can be vital to the correct
>> functioning of the program!
>
>Clearly.
>
>> Currently, HTML is unusable as a means of
>> transmitting source code; other content types must be used instead.
>
>Why, what is wrong with the <code> and <pre> tags? I have seens a substantial
>amount of source code in various languages embeddd in HTML documents, and the
>pre element appeared to be quite sufficient for this.
>
>The only thing that appears to be missing and which might, after discussion, be
>advisible is preservation of multiple spaces inside code elements. Thety are
>already preserved inside pre elements.

	This is one of the reasons why the HTML 3.0 TAB is sorely missed.
It's combinations of INDENT, ID and TO attributes allowed one to set up,
rather simply and effectively, the kind of document presentation being
sought in this thread, without "resorting" to PRE (A monospaced "font" is
all there is for Lynx, but that's a real "come down" for GUIs. 8-).

	It had the potential for "abuse", homologous to the "abuse" of
serial &nbsp;'s for "first line intents" in lieu of more elegant style
sheet mechanisms, but there were many "valid" and desireable, indeed
"elegant", uses which could be made of the HTML 3.0 TAB, and which can't
be done with style sheets.  It's removal from the so-called 3.2, with
no apparent prospects for restoration, is a sad situation for many of
us.

				Fote

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Received on Wednesday, 25 September 1996 13:46:17 UTC