Re: Line breaking (<NOBR>, <WBR>)

Paul Prescod wrote:
> 
> At 08:45 PM 7/21/96 -0500, Keith Calvert Ivey wrote:
> >How would one use a style sheet to do the equivalent of <NOBR>?
> >Something like
> >
> >    <SPAN CLASS=PHONE>+1 703 683 0683</SPAN>
> 
> That's exactly right. You will get all kinds of neat side effects from
> explicitly marking up phone numbers. For instance, people with
> telephony-smart browsers can click on the phone number to dial it. People with

No, that will not work. Some people will use CLASS=PHONE, others CLASS=TELEPHONE,
or CLASS=TEL, or more probably CLASS=NO_BREAK. Since anyone can think up of
a class name, the CLASS attribute is worthless for the reader, it's only usefull
for the author. Editors will use attribute names like FOO138, as they have no
idea it it used for a phone number, all the author can do is select a 'new class'.
I think a class will only be useful for the associated stylesheet.

> In a perfect world, you could invent and use a <PHONE> element, but HTML is
> not that flexible.

I would very much prefer that. *Then* a user or a browser author knows what to
expect, but how can she from the CLASS attribute. I wouldn't mind seeing a
ton of such attributes; they are in my opinion much more usefull that CLASS.



Abigail

Received on Monday, 22 July 1996 11:01:27 UTC