Re: floating images flush bottom

On Thu, 31 Oct 1996 lee@sq.com wrote:
> David Perrell <davidp@earthlink.net> wrote:
> 
> > I want to divide a _paragraph_ into columns.
> > 
> > <STYLE>
> > P { cols: 2;
> >     colspace: 2em }
> > 
> > 
> >             HEADING
> > 
> > Columns would     a property
> > be really cool    as opposed to
> > if they were      an element.
> 
> Presumably "colspace" is the gutter here.
> It's actually more general to give each column an internal left
> and right margin, but no matter.
> 
> What should happen if the paragraph is longer than a screen?
> Do I scroll down to the end of the first column, then scroll
> back up to the beginning of the second? I'll start needing
> bookmarks within single web pages!  This is the thing I dislike
> most about PDF and Acrobat...

If the column setting applies to the entire document, then the 
obvious solution is to scroll *horizontally*, rather than 
vertically.  i.e., each column would span the height of the 
viewing region, and the reader would *pan* across the document 
if it were to end up being too wide to display all at once.


So rather than:


         <----------->  Page spans width of viewing region
         
     +--------------------+
     |                    |     
     |   xxxxxxxxxxxxx    *
     |   xxxxxxxxxxxxx    #
     |   xxxxxxxxxxxxx    #
     |   xxxxxxxxxxxxx    #  <-- Vertical
     |   xxxxxxxxxxxxx    *      scroll bar
     |   xxxxxxxxxxxxx    *
     |   xxxxxxxxxxxxx    *
     |   xxxxxxxxxxxxx    *
     |   xxxxxxxxxxxxx    |
     +--------------------+
               ^
               |
     Text flows vertically




One would have:

                       
         +-------------------------------------+
   ^     |  xxxxxxxx  xxxxxxxx  xxxxxxxx  xxxxx| 
   |     |  xxxxxxxx  xxxxxxxx  xxxxxxxx  xxxxx|  
   |     |  xxxxxxxx  xxxxxxxx  xxxxxxxx  xxxxx|  Columns flow
   |     |  xxxxxxxx  xxxxxxxx  xxxxxxxx  xxxxx|  horizontally
   |     |  xxxxxxxx  xxxxxxxx  xxxxxxxx  xxxxx| 
   |     |  xxxxxxxx  xxxxxxxx  xxxxxxxx  xxxxx| 
   |     |  xxxxxxxx  xxxxxxxx  xxxxxxxx  xxxxx| 
   v     |  xxxxxxxx  xxxxxxxx  xxxxxxxx  xxxxx| 
         +--**************######***********----+  
  Page spans                ^
  height of                 |
  viewing         Horizontal scroll bar
  region


This would, of course, require that the page be reformatted 
each time the user changes the height of the viewing region.  
Still, it's no more problematic than the normal display 
method, which demands reformatting whenever the *width* of 
the window changes.

--
Michael Seaton (mseaton@inforamp.net)

Received on Thursday, 31 October 1996 06:07:39 UTC