Re: h1, h2, etc.

Bruce Bailey wrote:
"I am always amused by the notion of trying to emulate a
print document in
html. Usually the results are quite sad.

"What are you doing for the drop caps?  Monochrome GIFs of
the  letter with
the letter as ALT text?"


Interesting that you should be amused by web pages that
emulate print documents, but you want to put two spaces
after periods. As someone else already mentioned, I think,
the added space is there to increase readability when using
monospaced typewriter fonts. When using a proportional font,
the extra space is not used. This reminds me of an English
professor I once had who insisted that papers be
typewritten, not printed with proportional fonts, because he
said the typewritten pages were easier to read. That would
have come as a shock to a great many experts on type.

I agree that emulation of print documents is not always
desirable and often impractical. But there are also times
when the traditional print format is appropriate. And it's
nice to have the option. Thus, for example, the inclusion of
drop caps in the CSS standard. An attempt, I believe, to get
happy results.

I don't often use drop caps, but when I do I've usually been
forced to use the image and alt text route, although not
always GIFs and not always monochrome.

Charles Munat
Puerto Vallarta

Received on Wednesday, 20 January 1999 12:17:44 UTC