Generating line breaks

Recent discussion has prompted some thinking on my part about line
breaks in generated content.  The current problem is that line feed
(U+000A) holds a priviledged position in CSS over all other line break
characters.  Line feed (U+000A) alone is recommended for use in
generated content to yield a line break.  Many systems, however, use a
string other than a single line feed (U+000A) as their native line
break sequence.  I believe that the long-term solution is
to introduce a keyword to represent line breaks.  The conformant
behavior in handling the line break keyword would be to generate a
line break.  The expectation and recommended behavior would be to
generate the line break string most common or most convenient for the
given system.

Both brevity and familiarity are satisfied by the keyword 'nl' or the
keyword 'br'.

In the current regime, I might write the following rule set.

note:before { content: "Note.\A"; }

In the proposed regime, I would write the following rule set instead.

note:before { content: "Note." nl; }

-- 
Etan Wexler, thrice winner, Exploding Head Contest
<mailto:ewexler@stickdog.com>

Received on Monday, 20 January 2003 01:09:26 UTC