Re: proposal for HTML4.01 amendment: <HR PAGEBREAK="before">

On Sat, Jan 12, 2002 at 01:09:56PM +0100, Christian Wolfgang Hujer wrote:
> * And now probably the most important argument against this (at least the
> suggested solution with <br />) *
> 
> 
> There is a technical reason why not to choose <br pagebreak="before" />. The
> <br /> element is Inline markup, that means, it has to be within another
> Flow markup. <br /> may not occur where only Block markup is allowed.
>...

ah. Thank-you for pointing this out.

My proposal is therefore amended to be,

"officially allow 'pagebreak=before' attribute for the HR tag" :->

Presumably, with the additional recommendation to treat the rest of the
HR like an "alt" tag for an IMG:
 Browsers that do not understand the pagebreak attribute, will render the
 HR as a normal "horizontal rule", respecting all the width, etc attributes.
 Browsers that DO understand the pagebreak, shall merely cause the
 appropriate behaviour for a "page break", instead of having to draw
 a horizontal line.

After all, HR is just a poor man's pagebreak to begin with. So time to
upgrade it!
[I updated the email Subject: line to match]

>I interpret pagebreaks as style as well, and while colors are restricted to
>all colorful media (screen, TV, projector, tty, print etc. if it's not grey
>(green etc.) scale or b/w) and fonts are restricted to all scalable media
>(screen, TV, projector, print etc.), page breaks are restricted to print
>only, so they are a quite media specific style.

How are you getting "page breaks are restricted to print only" ??
I just pointed out an example where page breaks are used in ELECTRONIC
media: in the 'more' program.

Besides which, the question should NOT be "are page breaks only currently
used in print media?" The question should be, "are page breaks potentially
useful in browsers, other than purely for printing purposes?"

I say yes, because the "page" metaphore extends beyond simply the printed
page: it is useful for the concept of a browser "window" also.

For the physical medium, a page break signifies,
"I dont know or care how large a page is, but this stuff coming next
 belongs at the start of a clean page"
For the electronic medium, a 'page' break cleanly translates to 
"I dont know or care how large your browser window is, but this stuff
 coming next belongs at the start of a fresh scroll area"
 
Note that this could equally be applied to a scrollable framed area.

Received on Saturday, 12 January 2002 07:39:08 UTC