Re:pages

At 11:11 PM 31/5/97, Erik Aronesty wrote:
>The concept of "pages" and "paged output" is an important one in
>        human understanding of readable content.

In my comments I use "page" in the browser context as a  single html file.

Logical groupings of material is an important one in human understanding of
readable content.  Division of such content into fixed page sizes conflicts
with that.

>
>Currently HTML is a "scrolling" medium without pages.
>

HTML is a medium which allows you to break up information on the basis of
need rather that on the limitataions of a print format.

>Pages that are defined by browsers are arbitrary...

The size of pages in books are arbitrary and set by the paper size not by
the logic of the content.

>and never take into
>account the fact that
>        we like to see major headings on "their own page" (without the previous
>section's
>        text visible on the screen).

The author of an HTML document can do this without having to worry about
arbitrary page breaks spitting material as is the case with print where the
medium constrains the layout.

>
>The concept of "pages" is not applicable print-only, and browsers/index
>tools could benefit
>        from <PAGE> tags by building appropriately paged "tables of contents".

That is the purpose of html anchors.

>
>Also, HTML prints very poorly and could benefit highly from a
>specified/implied.
>Without a specified page break it is impossible to build formatted
>reports that print well.

Material designed for printing is very difficult to read on screen.  If you
want printing use postscript or pdf.  Better still, have your document in
sgml so that they can be translated to whatever output format is required.


Tony

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Received on Wednesday, 11 June 1997 22:08:23 UTC