Re: HSL Troll...

David Perrell wrote, at 12:17 -0800 on 3.12.97:
 
> >   This points out a serious, looming problem.  The logical extension of
> >this last progression is parsecs, which are typically abbreviated as
>"pc."
> >However, this unit abbreviation is already used for picas!  What to do?
> >Obviously the authors were not sufficiently far-sighted in their original
> >efforts, and total backwards compatibility is now directly threatened.
>
> Practically-speaking, parsecs should not be considered for inclusion,
>since
> by the time a display warranting such units is rendered the viewer would
> probably be dead.

Also consider the accessibility problems arising from round-off errors in
representing geometric divisions of the sky in decimal notation - whole
galaxies could be misregistered, effectively excluding them from the
universe of network-accessible information.

Besides which I've heard something about the red and blue guns being
affected when operating over astronomical units, which could lead to
unsightly dithering in 8-bit display environments.

A better solution to this quandary, I think, is to create the @sky media
type, and to use pixel notation exclusively in such stylesheets. All
CSS1-conformant UAs will, as we know, adjust pixel values to approximate a
visual angle of 0.0227 degrees. The use of fractional pixels should permit
the targetting of most astronomically significant objects within a
20-minute turn time, unless the UA is running on a Pentium(tm) processor.

_____________________________
Todd Fahrner
mailto:fahrner@pobox.com

The trouble with knowing how to do things the wrong way is that your skills
will always be in demand.

Received on Wednesday, 3 December 1997 17:03:13 UTC