Re: indents

Douglas Rand wrote:

> Greg Kostello wrote:
> > Defining the stylist behavior for the first paragraph following a
> > headline fulfills a much desired need. Although, IMHO it doesn't
> go far
> > enough. Typically, the first and last paragraphs in a story may
> get
> > special treatment, such as different indentation on the first
> paragraph
> > and perhaps a decorative rule (not inline) for the last paragraph.
> A
> > different style sheet may produce an altogether different look.
> Still,
> > that may not be sufficient. For example, suppose you want to
> describe
> > every other paragraph as having some special stylistic treatment
> (say a
> > background shade of gray). I think we need a way of specifying
> style as
> > applying to a pattern in a sequence of elements. Opinions?
>
> I think that there's a fine line between functionality which
> requires
> direct support and that which doesn't.  It's pretty easy to label
> the
> first and last paragraphs with a specific class and get the desired
> behavior.  Other examples of pseudo-classes and elements are much
> more
> difficult to simulate without direct support.  For example,  it is
> surely possible to emulate p:first-line,  but you can't possibly do
> a
> good job of it given that you can't determine the break point.

I agree that much behavior can be achieved by attributing elements. But
as was stated many times before in this group. But I think we want to
get away from adding stylistic behavior for single instances of content.
Even if we were to attribute those paragraphs with the "first" and
"last" values, copying and pasting those paragraphs to a different
context should imply different stylistic behavior. IMHO we should free
the user from thinking about such details so they can focus on content
not have to worry about the details of presentation.

Furthermore, imagine a successor to the current version of HTML (perhaps
XML)  is extended so that different pieces of text content can be
linked. The "first" or "last" tag again would be irrellivant in the
linked context.

From reading  Liam Quin message DSSSL seems to already have solved this
problem. Perhaps we can borrow from that specification.

lee@sq.com wrote:
> The DSSSL style language [3] allows one to select the first (or nth)
> paragraph for special treatment.  SoftQuad Panorama [4] has a
drop-down
> choice offering First, Middle, Last, non-First, non-Middle, non-Last,
All.
> This suffices in most cases, because you can also use containment and
> attributes to choose styles.

>
>
> I'm more interested in seeing functionality which is missing from
> CSS,
> *and* cannot be emulated easily.  Counters,  good pagination
> support,
> the absolute positioning stuff,  are all examples of that.  IMO,
> some
> sort of :first-para, :last-para pseudo-class is not.

>
>
> Doug
> --
> Doug Rand                               drand@sgi.com
> Silicon Graphics/Silicon Desktop        http://reality.sgi.com/drand
>
> Disclaimer: These are my views,  SGI's views are in 3D



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Greg Kostello                        mailto://kostello@digitalstyle.com
DigitalStyle Corporation                   http://www.digitalstyle.com/
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Received on Monday, 14 April 1997 15:16:33 UTC