Re: Horizontal rules

On 22-Feb-00, Matthew Brealey wrote:

>> [...]
>> But how should I supply this float with the proper width? Unless given
>> by the user (in pixels) then the width is normally a percentage of the
>> available horizontal space, though using the containing box to [...]
>> the rule for a percentage width) won't respect the other floats.
> No it won't; but because you have set the width of the float that the
> horizontal rule is next to, and should have done so in %, the width of the
> horizontal rule can be deduced.

Ahh, now I finally understand what you're saying.

You're telling me, as a document author, how I can design a page which contains
a horizontal ruler which will respect floats.  But this is not at all what I'm
whining about.  Let me try and rephrase my "problem".

I'm adding CSS support to my browser and have kicked the HTML rendering code in
favor of a HTML to CSS mapping, so that all old HTML elements will be rendered
using the available stylesheet properties.

However, in the old days (before CSS) a HR element would respect floating
tables and images (even though the HTML 4 spec just say "the width of the
canvas") -- and it is impossible for me to do a CSS mapping that will cause
the HR element to still be rendered like this.

As a solution I just introduced a (private) keyword to the left/right margin,
that made it the same as the width of the current floats, but since you
recently gave a (recommended?) way of mapping the HR element to CSS, which
wasn't sensitive to floats, then I spoke up mainly to make you aware of this
problem.

So to sum up my point then I'd like that any recommended default stylesheet for
the HR element take into consideration that the ruler should never be drawn
below any floating elements, because it has AFAIK never been that way with
normal (non-styled) HTML.

Regards Allan

Received on Thursday, 24 February 2000 20:58:18 UTC