Re: HTML 3.2: PRE should not exclude IMG

On Fri, 31 May 1996, Gerald Oskoboiny wrote:

> Benjamin Franz writes:
> 
> > The whole issue is rapidly becoming irrelevant anyway since the use of
> > images in PRE is a hack to work around the lack of deployed tables - a
> > situation that has all but disappeared now as even AOL is rolling out a
> > table capable browser - leaving Lynx as the only browser with any
> > significant share that _cannot_ do tables. Tables are *much* superior
> > in achieving page layout control in general.
> 
> I don't think I can accomplish what I want using tables. (But I'm open to
> suggestions; see <URL:http://ugweb.cs.ualberta.ca/~gerald/validate/?url=ht
> tp://www.netscape.com/> for an example.)

Your use is interesting - but would work better if your <PRE> wasn't
prematurely terminated by the embedding of <HR> tags in browsers not smart
enough to use a 2.0 DTD. In Netscape3.0b4 the pointer appears pretty much
anywhere it wants to rather than under the error - an error caused by the
difference between 2.0 and 3.2 because the <HR>'s are prematurely
terminating the <PRE>. 

An alternative using tables would be to place each in error line in its
own one row table, and each tag/attribute in its own cell of that table. 
Then you could put an arrow in the same table cell using a <br> to
seperate the error-ridden code and the arrow/explanation text. This would
also serve to make a real association between the error and the
explanation of the error. With a little careful use of <p> and </p> you
could also make the output usable in non-table aware browsers such as lynx
and the old AOL browser.

Bingo. No more need for mono-spacing or violating the <PRE> content model.
In fact - no need for <PRE> at all. And best of all - multiple errors
could be displayed on a single line.

-- 
Benjamin Franz

Received on Friday, 31 May 1996 20:55:25 UTC