[css3-page] LCWD issue 21 -- [21] Section 3.3.2

Ernest,

The list of media names is very large and unbounded. See The Printer Working
Group
Standard for Media Standardized Names [1].  However, specifying the media
names letter and A4:
1. addresses a very large number of uses,
2. is notationally convenient (more so than 8.5 11in, etc.), and 
3. is not prone to math round-off or representational errors may not match
the specification by numbers to their internal representation of media
sizes.  For example, its more accurate and less ambiguous to say A4 than
210m 297mm which when converted to printer dots (at 600dpi, 1200dpi, etc)
may not match the internal representation.

I attempted a compromise by using the two most often used names/sizes rather
than all media names.

Comments?

Jim

[1] ftp://ftp.pwg.org/pub/pwg/standards/pwg5101.1.pdf

> -----Original Message-----
> From: James Bigelow [mailto:jhb@jhb.boi.hp.com] 
> Sent: Wednesday, January 07, 2004 4:44 PM
> To: www-style@w3.org; ernestcline@mindspring.com
> Subject: [css3-page] LCWD issue 21 -- [21] Section 3.3.2
> 
> 
> Thank you for your comment on the CSS3 Paged Media Module, 
> archived in:  
> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2003Dec/0130.htm
l

Your issue, shown below, has been assigned the number 21.
> 
> Having opened Pandora's box with "A4" and "letter", I feel that the 
> standard should either (1) explain why the decision was made to limit 
> the listed sizes to just these two, (2) drop these sizes, or (3) 
> change the list of predefined sizes and explain why those were chosen.
> 
> With "A4" and "letter" as part of the standard, it does not take much 
> imagination to suppose that there will be those who try to extend the 
> standard on their own.  It would be best if the standard tries to 
> control these non-standard extensions is some manner.
> 
> For example, one could justify supporting only the ISO defined paper 
> sizes (ISO 216). envelope sizes (ISO 269), etc. by way of 
> non-hyphenated keywords.  Then if national sizes need to be predefined 
> as well, the standard could specify a convention such as: 
> <country-code> "-" <name> Thus, we could have "us-letter" "ca-p4" or 
> "ja-b4" if including keywords for national standard paper sizes be 
> deemed necessary.
> 

A further response will be forthcoming. Please address any replys to
www-style@w3.org with [css3-page] in the subject line. 

   -- Jim Bigelow, Editor

Received on Wednesday, 7 January 2004 20:22:07 UTC