- From: Abigail <abigail@tungsten.gn.iaf.nl>
- Date: Fri, 17 May 1996 19:22:43 +0200 (MET DST)
- To: www-html@w3.org
Shawn Steele wrote: ++ ++ Regarding the pros and cons of JUSTIFY: ++ ++ I recently was responsible for designing a print brochure and notice ++ that justified text looks pretty bad in some circumstances, ++ particularly when the width of the column is narrow. Since we can't ++ control how wide the user's brower is, we don't know how bad it may ++ look. For example: ++ ++ | ******************** This paragraph | ++ | * Img align=left * is very narrow | ++ | * * in width. | ++ | * * Browsers can | ++ | ******************** have different | ++ | sizes depending on individual users | ++ | preferences. | ++ ++ (where the | are the edge of the browser window) As you can see, "in ++ width." didn't work very well. This could be helped by adjusting the ++ various spacings, but still it is pretty hard to stretch a few words a ++ long distance and have it look good. In print media, the designer can ++ knows what the end result will be, so its not too difficult to work ++ around these kinds of problems. In the above example the word order ++ could be rearranged or something to make it fit. Of course hyphenation ++ would help, but you could still end up with ++ pretty s ++ -illy h- ++ yphenat- ++ ions. Justifying text might not be very easy, it isn't exactly new or rocket science. (La)TeX has been doing it for more than a decade, just like many other packages. Sure, the situations pointed out will occur, but they are exceptions. Likewise, with the align attribute on <img> we can have: | ******************** This paragraph | | * Img align=left * is very narrow | | * * in width and | | ******************** one word too | | long. | Very ugly, yet not a reason not to allow the align attribute on images. Furthermore, 'align = justify' should been seen as a suggestion, a smart browser would ignore it in certain cases, for instance when the current width is too small (relative to the font size). I think that if one allows the align attribute, 'justify' should be a valid option. Abigail -- <URL: http://www.edbo.com/abigail/>
Received on Friday, 17 May 1996 13:22:52 UTC