Re: Body-indent

On Wed, 3 Nov 1999 19:39:08 -0500 (EST), you wrote:

>On Wed, 3 Nov 1999 15:53:48 -0500 (EST), Jan Roland Eriksson
>(rex@css.nu) wrote:
>> On Wed, 3 Nov 1999 04:25:37 -0800 (PST), you wrote:
>> >Perhaps I've missed a previous post...

>> You may have missed some threads in ciwas as well as some basic
>> understanding of even the CSS1 specs.
>>   P:first-line { padding-left: 0; }
>>   P { margin: 0; border: none; padding-left: 5em; }
>> Might be an example if I have understood your question correctly.

>That won't work for two reasons:
> * Box properties aren't allowed on :first-line pseudo-elements.
> * If they were, you'd want a -5em padding-left.

I knew that, it's the difference of allowed properties on the
:first-line and :first-letter pseudo elements that constantly keeps me
confused.

I'm sorry that I brought that confusion of mine into this list.

>There are methods for creating hanging indents using positive left
>margin and negative text-indent.

There are simple reasons as to why you would not want to use the margin
property for this...

  <URL:http://css.nu/temp/indent-test.html>

...solid response in Opera 3.60 while no one of the "big two"
(WinNT-versions of IE4.01/NS4.08) wants to play along, but none of them
destroys the content either, so it's Ok with me at least.

>That's allowed (I think)

Yes it is...

>but it is potentially unsafe because of interactions with
>user stylesheets or with browsers that don't support all properties.

Just any property that is not supported, or worse, buggy or partially
supported in ua's, is unsafe to use if the target is "control"

Change "control" into "suggestion" and compose docs and stylesheets
accordingly, then it becomes easier to live with.

>I think a body-indent or hanging-indent property would be a good thing.

Well, given the fact that required functionality is already available in
at least one ua, it would not be the worst thing to have implemented.

Otoh, my personal view is that there may be some more important things
to deal with. Let's say...

 "I think that a sort of agreed upon philosophy of what CSS is
  supposed to do and not do, would be a good thing."

Just as I prefer to use RISC based CPU's for whatever programming task I
may be assigned too at work, I would like to see a well implemented
"mean and lean" version of CSS too, that gives me as an author the
possibility to combine several small and well defined property:value
pairs into my presentational suggestion.

My interpretation of last years discussions around CSS is that "the
advocates" wants it to go into a CISC state, where authors are supposed
to rely on others to do their job correct first, before they can start
to utilize the technology them self.

There is so much that can be done with CSS1 already, together with a
fairly compliant ua, but I seriously doubt that authors at large have
even tried to really learn about that part yet. So when are they going
to have a chance to learn about the rest, if proposals for new stuff
just keeps flooding in?

-- 
Jan Roland Eriksson <rex@css.nu> .. <URL:http://css.nu/>

Received on Thursday, 4 November 1999 15:54:46 UTC