Re: Portrait vs. Landscape (was Re: THEAD & TFOOT for columns)

> In what way? If a browser chooses to print in landscape mode, the
> ALIGN attribute will still work. A "landscaped" page still has a left
> and a right..

Yes, that is true, but if I'm laying things out horizontally I would 
likely have a need to float things at the top and bottom of the page 
as well, whereas left/right could actually mean beginning/end of 
document...
 
> CSS1 makes no assumptions about landscape vs. portrait and all CSS
> properties work equally well. If you disagree, please provide
> examples..

I'll try to think of more, but I think lack of vertical alignment is 
one of those areas, float should have top/bottom as options.

A columnar display is the major presentation that would be used in a 
horizontal layout, that being lacking only tables are an option for 
horizontal, but those require specific sectioning of the document.

If my layout scrolls left/right entirely I'd like some facility to 
control similar layout ability that th vertical scrolling has.
An image would have need to float at the top of the page, or the 
bottom of the page.  In the same sense the 'clear' property would 
need top/bottom.

Consider the diagrams in the CSS1 spec, they all show the next 
content below the previous one, while it makes sense that collapsing 
of padding/margins should work the same way horizontally, there is no 
mention of it.

Consider sections 4.1.1 and 4.1.2, if the spec wasn't specific to 
vertical scrolling then why are these two topics (Vertical fomatting 
and horizontal formatting) treating separately?

5.5.23 'width'
Value: <length> | <percentage> | auto

5.5.24 'height'
Value: <length> | auto

<percentage> should be a part of 'height' to allow for better 
horizontal layouts.


While the major exclusion of horizontal comes from the lack of having 
column support, there are still cases where a left/right display 
would be better.  I believe there are Eastern languages that read 
top/down as opposed to left/right?  These would benefit from a 
horizontal layout.
__
| Mortar: Advanced Web Development <http://bigpic.com/mortar/>
| Neil St.Laurent  neil@bigpic.com
| Big Picture Multimedia

Received on Sunday, 17 August 1997 16:53:06 UTC