print page number /= current page number in Braille pagination.

Al Gilman writes:

 > >   @page :header {
 > >     content: none, "Page " decimal(pageno), none;
 > >  } 
 > > 
 > > The example would insert the string "Page 4" centered on the fourth
 > > page. The 'none' keywords indicate that there should be no running
 > > header on the left side of the page, nor the right side.
 > 
 > I believe that would only get me the page number of the current
 > Braille page.

Correct.

 > The person reading a text in Braille also wants to
 > know what page the same text is on in the print version.

This is very hard and conflicts with other accessibility concerns.
True to its tradition, HTML doesn't know about pages. CSS2 has the
notion of pages [1]. For example, an element can request or refuse a
page break before, after or inside it. But, since HTML documents
should scale onto the widest range of output media possible (e.g. US
letter paper and A4 paper), CSS cannot guarantee that a certain
element ends up on a certain page. Also, unavailability of fonts,
different hyphenation rules, a users's request for large font sizes
etc. make this impossible.

 > The idea
 > is that this will be back-annotated into the HTML, but how you
 > know what value is the print-page-number is not standardized in
 > the HTML spec.  It will be a convention between the writer of the
 > HTML and the writer of the braille-medium stylesheet.  
 > 
 > A mechanism very much like the one you described in which one can
 > anoint "effective headers" through selector-driven rules should
 > be capable of handling this one.  

If the visible printout and the braille printout are produced at the
same time, one could see the possibility of a "feedback channel" which
would report page numbers. The CSS&FP WG has not considered this
option.

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/WD-CSS2/page.html

Regards,

-h&kon

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Received on Friday, 7 November 1997 06:21:08 UTC