Re: Portrait vs. Landscape (was Re: THEAD & TFOOT for columns)

> MAybe HTML 4.0 doesn't, nor does HTML in theory, but ALIGN=LEFT,
> ALIGN=right, are both portrait oriented.

That does not make any sense.  Right is right and left is left,
regardless of whether the horizontal edge of your window is longer
than the vertical or vice versa. Most screens are landscape: they are
wider than they are high. I'm really unclear what the problem is here.

> Almost any place that has the ALIGN attribute was strictly for
> portrait, very few things have/support VALIGN to any usefulness.
> Consider even: <BR CLEAR="LEFT|RIGHT|ALL">.

I must be being incredibly dense but I don't see what you want.  On
the very rare occasions when I need VALIGN (in tabular matter) it
seems to work just fine.

> <HR>, where's <VR>?

Difficult to know what to do with it when your document model is
pageless and the user controls the window geometry. I guess you could
put it between columns in MULTICOL, though.

> But it is true the pure SGML (not as implemented by HTML) doesn't 
> prohibit a model that would allow for horizontal representation.

I don't know any document model that prohibits it. Can you explain
more what a "horizontal representation" is? Do you mean typesetting
at 90 degrees?

> Style sheets, particularily CSS, gives virtually no possibility of 
> doing any useful layout for landscape displays.

Such as?

> Float, clear, properties should have TOP,BOTTOM as attributes rather 
> than just LEFT,RIGHT.

Top or bottom of _what_? The window? The screen? The pane? The frame?
Or the printed page?

> A lack of orphan control actually prevents CSS from being useful in 
> any non-continuous vertical scrolling medium (such as print or 
> horizontal display).

This does seem to be true, but printing was never a requirement: the
Web was designed as a terminal-based online medium. If you want to
take the information out of that and put it in a page-based medium,
you need a different document model, like TeX or PDF.

///Peter

Received on Friday, 15 August 1997 17:12:11 UTC