- From: Walter Ian Kaye <walter@natural-innovations.com>
- Date: Sat, 12 Jul 1997 22:27:35 -0700
- To: www-html@w3.org
At 12:11a -0400 07/13/97, Liam Quinn wrote:
> At 08:44 PM 12/07/97 -0700, David Perrell wrote:
> >>From Liam Quinn:
> >> At 06:59 PM 12/07/97 -0700, David Perrell wrote:
> >> >Arnoud "Galactus" Engelfriet wrote:
> >> >> 2. There is definite statement on being collapsing or
> >> >not.
> >> >
> >> >A statement there should definitely be, and it should definitely be
> >> >'not'.
> >>
> >> Why?
> >
> >The reason white space must collapse is to allow readable structured
> >markup. Author/designers commonly use multiple to bypass that
> >limitation. Since consecutive are there by intent, and the
> >intent is unambiguous, is there any logical reason why they should
> >collapse?
>
> Not really, except perhaps that multiple spaces (non-breaking or
> otherwise) are not structural elements and thus should be ignored. HTML
> 4.0 defines the entity as a method for prohibiting a line break.
> If we accept as a non-collapsing, non-breaking space, HTML 4.0's
> definition would have to be augmented to also define as a method
> for forcing a space. But the fact that multiple spaces have nothing to do
> with structure and everything to do with presentation suggests that non-
> collapsible spaces have no place in HTML.
Note the key word in David's statement: readable.
You could stand in an ivory tower and pass the buck by saying it's just a
"browser issue", but web authors must deal with the real world and make
their pages as legible as possible. This occasionally requires a bit of
-based nudging to provide some breathing space between items. It's
not ideal, but neither are a lot of other things on Planet Earth...
__________________________________________________________________________
Walter Ian Kaye <boo_at_best*com> Programmer - Excel, AppleScript,
Mountain View, CA ProTERM, FoxPro, HTML
http://www.natural-innovations.com/ Musician - Guitarist, Songwriter
Received on Sunday, 13 July 1997 01:31:25 UTC