- From: Nils Klarlund <klarlund@research.att.com>
- Date: Mon, 13 Dec 1999 14:30:34 -0500 (EST)
- To: <www-style@w3.org>
- Cc: "klarlund" <klarlund@research.att.com>
Thanks to people who replied to my first posting. Maybe I am in above my
head,
but I would like to offer the following simple suggestion:
Introduce a parameterized unit called owidth (o for "outer"). It
has the syntax owidth('T'), where T is any string of characters. It's
meaning for an element E is the width of an imagined box containing
T; the imagined box is typeset in the same context as that of the
E.
I hope this semantics is sound. This proposal is very flexible and
contains no arbitrary decisions as Bert hinted any canonized unit
would entail ("width of what" for proportional-width fonts).
I could now easily---even with a fixed-width font---typeset
mathematics-kind-of-stuff like
( A = B or
C = D )
where the exercise is to get the A to line up with the C, and where I
would like to typeset each line in its own div box (so that if a
line-wrap around occurs, then the display doesn't get too mixed up).
I would write something like
<div style="margin-left: owidth('( ');
text-indent: -owidth('( ');">( A = B or
</div>
<div style="margin-left: owidth('( ');">C=D )</div>
/Nils
Received on Monday, 13 December 1999 18:28:06 UTC