indents

First, I want to congratulate Hakon and others who have been pushing style
sheets for two years. You have achieved a lot. Yes, there is much to be
done, but I'm happy to see that the W3C and the consortium process is alive
and well. Now, with the 4.0 browsers, we have a chance to find all the
little implementation differences that will drive designers crazy for the
coming 12 months or so. 

I want to call your attention to the fact that there is no way to denote a
first-paragraph using HTML markup, and this makes it very difficult to do
good typography without recoding our pages using the <DIV> tag. I am
referring, of course, to the fact that in real typography you don't indent
the first paragraph, that indents are <i>separators,</i> not "paragraph
beginners." Both Todd and I have mentioned this several times, and to me,
it shows that the priorities of the people writing HTML specs are on
syntax, not on functionality. 
       Believe it or not, there are other things real typographers do that
the HTML and Style groups aren't thinking about, but they all too rarely
ask designers what they want. We chime in now and again, but it's difficult
because we're not syntax experts. 
       I look forward to having to use style-sheet terorism to communicate
with my readers. At least we're headed in the right direction, no thanks to
certain tag manufacturers, who shall remain nameless.


David Siegel              415 278-9900 x22     fax 278-9911

S T U D I O   V E R S O   512 2nd Street, San Francisco, CA 94107

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"Simplicity... elegance... cross-platform compatibility."

Received on Thursday, 10 April 1997 03:40:39 UTC