- From: Charles F. Munat <coder@acnet.net>
- Date: Wed, 20 Jan 1999 11:07:41 -0600
- To: "Bruce Bailey" <bbailey@clark.net>
- Cc: <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
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