Re: Replaceable element for parameterising pages (was: Proposal for small enhancement)

I am documenting a project of mine. I found that a web-page like documentation will serve the purpose better than a flat manual.

There are paragraphs that repeat themselves in various pages. It will be kind of unnatural to break the text flow with a link to the common text and expect a mouse action from the reader, that's why I want the paragraphs to be shown in each individual file. For now, I used the copy-paste method - time consuming and I hesitate to change something there. Here I would enjoy a functionality similar with my <r src=URL>

I am also using in many of my files tables with two columns: in the left column of the row there is a symbol associated with the nature of the action described, in the right column there is a narrative regarding the action. The general structure of a delimiter between two rows looks like this:
<hr></td></tr><tr><td valign=top><abbr title="Uses SmartChip technology"><img src="smartchip.jpg"></abbr></td><td>

Different images will have different titles in abbr, but there are three kinds for many, many times in almost all my files.

Here I would use the <r id=ID>, or whatever attribute name should be there (wink).

There is another area where I would have liked such a feature: the name of my project (uniQ/Card) is written in a certain way, to serve as a logo. It could have been accomplished using CSS, but would have been too much to write for each and every reference to that name/logo. Instead I made some png's and am using them. This solution works, but the cost is in the size of the carried information: the png is 305 bytes (an animated gif version goes up to 321 bytes) + the reference to it (<img style="vertical-align:middle" src="uc0.gif">), while the CSS enhanced version would have been 20-something bytes, and the plain text version is uniQ/Card -> 9 bytes. The other disadvantage with the graphic version is that it is frozen: the font does not correlate with the font used in the text. On my machine they do, just because I made the graphics to correlate, but that's not for my reading. I had to make three verions of that logo, one normal size (assuming it to be
 12 points), one for <h2> and one for <h3>. On someone's else screen things may not look so well, and a text-oriented, but CSS-enhanced version would have been better - if it weren't too much work for me for every occurence of my logo.
Here, again, I'll use <r id=ID>

Finally, Andrei, I am not worried about resistance to my idea, criticism to it or even outright rejection (nor acceptance or enthusiasm will scarry me). I came with a suggestion which may or may not find an audience; I'm more worried of not being able to express myself properly in English, at least not the same way I would do it in Romanian.

If my experience is unique in my need is very particular, not many people will rally behind such a change; if, on the other hand, it is a widespread situation, then we may end up with a quorum interested in implementing such a change, and something may happen. I am grateful for learning from people better prepared than me.

Regards,
Sorin Schwimmer

Received on Friday, 5 December 2008 21:14:33 UTC