Re: Tabs in CSS1

> I would like to see support for tabs added into the CSS
> spec ... Are there any plans to add this in? 

There has been discussion about this for future enhancements
to CSS. One approach is define tab rule property with the ability
to set tab stops at particular positions, differentiating between
left, center, right and "decimal" tabs. A horizontal tab character
then moves the output position to the next tab stop. Instead of
the '\t' char you could require an SGML entity or an element,
e.g. <tab align=right>.

One issue is whether there should be a default tab rule with
tab stops at regular intervals, and whether when you move past
the last tab stop on an explicit rule, you then see the default
tab stops. Another issue is what to do when the output position
is already to the right of the next tab stop: should the tab be
treated as if it werer a single space character, or should you
skip to the next defined tab stop (which may well be of a different
type e.g. a decimal tab stop rather than a left tab stop).

How should tab rules be interpreted for lines with mixtures
of left to right and right to left character sequences? The
above description assumes a western left to right context.
-- 
Dave Raggett, 545 Technology Square, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA
email: dsr@w3.org, tel: +1 617 258 5741, fax: +1 617 258 5999

Received on Wednesday, 20 November 1996 09:25:07 UTC