Re: Identifying print page numbers in HTML documents

On Wed, 2 Jul 1997, Daniel Dardailler wrote:

> [BTW, is using smileys in the text something that bothers blind users
> or is is OK ?]
> 

Normally this is not a problem: they will be either announced as
punctuation marks by a speech synthesizer, or ignored, depending on the
setting of the relevant parameters in the screen reader. Braille displays
will simply render them as punctuation.

 > CSS will probably be extended with more selectors but the issue of >
readyness is important so using CLASS, NAME or ID is better than REL.  >

Does CSS provide a mechanism for matching, as a selector, any name
attribute with a value of the form "IPP-[0-9]+"? Note that it would be
insufficient to select just any anchor element containing a name
attribute; it is necessary to identify only those that are actually being
used for representing page numbers. If the name attribute could be used,
there would be no need to modify the original proposal. Otherwise, class
would be needed.

Also, the format of the page number could be extended to permit a single
letter prefix to precede the page number. Some documents, an example of
which I am reading at the moment, contain multiple series of page numbers
which need to be kept distinct. Thus, page numbers such as a31, h18 etc.,
should be allowed, and similarly for Roman numerals, provided that one is
careful in one's choice of available letters so as to avoid ambiguity.

One could also consider more difficult cases such as the reference schemes
that are used to identify passages in ancient Greek texts, but these are
perhaps so rare on the web as not to warrant attention. In any case,
documents employing these references might well be encoded in XML rather
than HTML. 

Jason White.

Received on Wednesday, 2 July 1997 20:57:59 UTC