Re: HTML Streaming

At 11:33 PM -0000 8/26/97, Peter Flynn wrote:
>Unfortunately, now that the everyone's using TABLE to align stuff,
>browsers CANNOT display-as-they-go, because they need to receive
>everything in the table before they can work out the widths. Width
>attributes on images help this, but do not entirely solve the
>problem. HTML has all the elements needed to do it (eg COLSPEC) but
>the browsers don't seem to do anything with them.

It would also be great if there could be some way, *any* way, through CSS
or a new HTML entity (heck, let's just add another one, why don't we) that
permits multi-columns.  Currently, *nothing* is available to do this in
actuality except for Netscape's proprietary MULTICOL element, which IMHO
does a not-so-good job.  Currently, style sheets offer no way to divide a
page into columns.

Even CSS-P only really allows you to define columns in the same way we've
used TABLEs, and you can't have flowing text that adjusts to the size of
the browser window or to the size of the text itself.  Currently, the only
way to really control how columns behave on a page is to be completely
tyrannical, forcing, through use of style-sheets, specific font-sizes which
will coincide with certain block positionings, etc.

Ideally, style-sheet attributes should be created that
  a) allow a group of block elements (grouped using DIV, perhaps) to be
divided into columns
  b) defines the width, gutter, spacing, etc. of these columns
  c) defines whether or not certain elements can be wrapped across a column

I don't know the address for the CSS mailing list; if someone could forward
them this e-mail I'd appreciate it.

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[                    Jordan Reiter                     ]
[            mailto:jreiter@mail.slc.edu               ]
[ "You can't just say, 'I don't want to get involved.' ]
[  The universe got you involved."  --Hal Lipset, P.I. ]
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Received on Tuesday, 26 August 1997 21:56:21 UTC