Re: indents

[nemo/Joel N. Weber II:]

| It's not clear to me exactly what the definition of a first paragraph
| is.

It's the first paragraph among all the paragraphs within something
that marks the boundaries of the collection of paragraphs we're
talking about.  In other words, "first" means what it usually means:
first relative to something that tells us where the beginning is.

| <HTML><HEAD></HEAD><BODY>
| 
| <P>This is one paragraph.  It comes before a heading</P>
| 
| <H1>This is a heading</H1>
| 
| <P>Here's another paragraph</P>
| 
| <P>OK, that's enough paragraphs.  I've very tired these days...</P>
| 
| </BODY></HTML>

The first paragraph in the example above is the one immediately
following <body>.  The body element has four children: a paragraph, a
heading, a second paragraph, and a third paragraph.  This is probably
not what the hypothetical author intended, but then the hypothetical
author probably wasn't thinking very hard.  A structure that more
likely reflects what most people would have intended if they had been
thinking about it would be:

  <HTML><HEAD></HEAD><BODY>

  <P>This is one paragraph.  It comes before a div.</P>

  <div>

  <H1>This is a div heading</H1>

  <P>This is the first paragraph in the div.</P>

  <P>OK, that's enough paragraphs.  I've very tired these days...</P>

  </div>

  </BODY></HTML>

Now there are two "first paragraphs": a first paragraph in <body> and
a first paragraph in <div>.  In XML I probably would have written:

  <example_document>

  <P>This is one paragraph.  It comes before any sections.</P>

  <section>

  <title>This is a section title</title>

  <P>This is the first paragraph in the section.</P>

  <P>OK, that's enough paragraphs.  I've very tired these days...</P>

  </section>

  </example_document>

Jon

Received on Wednesday, 16 April 1997 03:58:51 UTC