Re: CSS3: Page headers/footers, auto-TOCs.

David Wheeler wrote:
> 
> I've looked over the new CSS2, and it appears to me that the printed version
> of the current CSS2 specification can't be fully described using its
> own language. 

Perhaps not fuly described, no. However it was generated from the HTML
version by a CSS engine which  implements @media print, and CSS was used
to control the formatting.

>  I'm hoping I'm wrong; perhaps I've missed something.
> 
> Here's what _appears_ to be missing to me:
> 
> 1. A way to handle page headers/footers and automatic insertion of page
>    numbers into printed pages. 

Yes. An earlier CSS2 draft had headers and footers, but was removed from
the final specification. There are a couple of implementations (Lotus
eSuite, Intranet Writer) that define CSS extensions for h&f. These
needed to be evaluated and there just wasn't time to do so (ie the
functionality was too late to make it into the final CSS2)

>  Almost all printed documents have
>    page numbers somewhere, but I don't see how to insert or control their
>    placement in CSS2.  It's more than page numbers, of course; printed
>    documents and transparencies often have many decorations around each page.

Yes

>    I suspect there is a relationship of this capability to frames.

Not especially.

> 2. A way to handle automatically generated (printed) tables of contents
>    (with correct page numbers).  This is probably beyond what many folks
>    are thinking about for CSS2, but it's an important issue for
>    developing documents that can be printed. 

The TOC and index were automatically generated, but not by CSS. They
were extracted from the markup (ie this was a source to source
transformation, not a source to formatting object with on-the-fly
transformation)

>  There have been some related
>    comments about needing to reference arbitrary items (e.g. figures)
>    on arbitrary pages, and I should note that this depends on the media
>    (in the web it should be hyperlinked; on paper it should have a
>     "see page" note).

Yes. Note that the HTML version of the CSS spec uses hyperlinks and the
PS/PDF versions have page numbers.

> If these capabilities don't exist, please consider them for CSS3.
> I'd like to be able to use CSS to describe basic, ordinary documents
> that can be printed, and without these capabilities that seems unlikely.

--
Chris

Received on Wednesday, 17 June 1998 23:18:52 UTC