Re: indents

Greg Kostello wrote:
> Defining the stylist behavior for the first paragraph following a
> headline fulfills a much desired need. Although, IMHO it doesn't go far
> enough. Typically, the first and last paragraphs in a story may get
> special treatment, such as different indentation on the first paragraph
> and perhaps a decorative rule (not inline) for the last paragraph. A
> different style sheet may produce an altogether different look. Still,
> that may not be sufficient. For example, suppose you want to describe
> every other paragraph as having some special stylistic treatment (say a
> background shade of gray). I think we need a way of specifying style as
> applying to a pattern in a sequence of elements. Opinions?

I think that there's a fine line between functionality which requires
direct support and that which doesn't.  It's pretty easy to label the
first and last paragraphs with a specific class and get the desired
behavior.  Other examples of pseudo-classes and elements are much more
difficult to simulate without direct support.  For example,  it is
surely possible to emulate p:first-line,  but you can't possibly do a
good job of it given that you can't determine the break point.

I'm more interested in seeing functionality which is missing from CSS,
*and* cannot be emulated easily.  Counters,  good pagination support, 
the absolute positioning stuff,  are all examples of that.  IMO,  some
sort of :first-para, :last-para pseudo-class is not.

Doug
-- 
Doug Rand				drand@sgi.com
Silicon Graphics/Silicon Desktop	http://reality.sgi.com/drand
Disclaimer: These are my views,  SGI's views are in 3D

Received on Monday, 14 April 1997 13:30:14 UTC