Re: Line affixes

> From: Etan Wexler (ewexler@stickdog.com)
> Subject: Line affixes
> 
> Stuart Ballard wrote:
> 
> > One thing missing that I've wanted for some time is the capability to do
> > something like what email does with quoting - ie add a single thing to
> > the start of each line.

.......

> I would like to see more use cases.  I have no desire for the generated line affix feature,
> so I am apathetic toward your proposal.  If the implementation support exists, that is
> great and I say, go ahead.  If the implementation support is absent or sketchy, that is
> bad and I say, pull the feature.

Coincidentally, I asked about/for just such a feature this week on c.i.w.a.s:

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&selm=3CE821D3.9E298BB1%40uncg.edu

Briefly, the desire is to be able to reproduce what was once a standard
typographic practice for marking quotations, namely by means of a
quotation mark at the beginning of every quoted line:

tttttttttttttttttttt
ttttttt 'qqqqqqqqqq
'qqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqq
'qqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqq
'qqqqq' tttttttttttt
tttttttttttttttttttt

For any element E, the CSS syntax that seems natural to me would be:

  E line:before { content: " ' "; }

(It should not apply to partial lines, like the first one in the
quotation above, but only to those lines that begin at the left margin.)
 It would get immediate use for blockquote, p, and q in the context of
reproducing old documents.  I wanted to apply it in several places
(section 6 for example) on a page I am working on that transcribes a
straightforward 18th C printed work (http://rjohara.net/gen/rogers/nr-mather.html).

Bob O'Hara

-- 
Robert J. O'Hara (rjohara@post.harvard.edu - http://rjohara.net)
Residential Colleges and University Reform: http://collegiateway.org

Received on Tuesday, 21 May 2002 01:57:41 UTC