Re: Line Break

The proposal seems to interpret "cause a line BREAK" as
"insert an EMPTY LINE".  It is not clear from the HTML5
spec that this interpretation is justified.  The note,

    While line breaks are usually represented in visual
    media by physically moving subsequent text to a new
    line, a style sheet or user agent would be equally
    justified in causing line breaks to be rendered in
    a different manner, for instance as green dots, or
    as extra spacing.

does not encourage a simplistic reading.

The CSS default for HTML was

    br:before       { content: "\A"; white-space: pre-line }

but that _is_ only a default.  I don't perfectly understand
'pre-line', but it says

    This value directs user agents to COLLAPSE SEQUENCES
    OF WHITE SPACE.  Lines are broken at preserved newlines
    and to fill line boxes.

which makes me wonder whether <br><br> could or should be
handled just like a single <br>.  To be safe,
I'd use

    <br style='content: "\A\A\A..."; white-soace: pre'>

I'm wondering why just having newlines inside a <pre> would
not do whatever it is that needs doing.

Received on Tuesday, 2 June 2015 01:06:27 UTC