Text wrapping control

I wonder if someone could tell me if any rules for text wrapping,
particularly as they apply to table cells, and to the deprecated
NOWRAP attribute, are defined anywhere in the CSS spec? Where the 
HTML 4.0 spec refers to NOWRAP as deprecated, it states, "Style 
sheets should be used instead of this attribute to achieve wrapping 
effects." While my first problem with this statement's phrasing is
that it's implies that NOWRAP behavior is implicitly defined or
controlled by defining wrap behavior (which I'm not sure is true), 
or perhaps that the default CSS behavior IS "NOWRAP", my MAIN problem
is that I have so far been unable to locate any text in the CSS spec 
that defines how NOWRAP behavior can be EXPLICITLY specified with CSS.

A related issue, but possibly not of primary interest to this forum,
is that from my experiments with IE5 and NS 4.7, I have found that
when CSS is used to define table layout, that the wrapping (or
not) of the text itself seems to be what primarily controls the
width of the table's cell, and thereby it's presentation. In one case,
a <br> within a table overrode the style that I had used
to define cell widths, and it seems odd to me that a <br> 
should be able to control the cell width (as opposed to just 
changing the presentation of the text WITHIN the cell).

IS this the defined behavior or is there something I am missing?

Rick Johnson
firespring@nfx.net

Received on Friday, 3 December 1999 12:08:36 UTC