RE: Feedback on 'Running headers and footers' suggestion

Jens wrote:
> What is the motivation to 'be able to insert the current 
> date/time into the header/footer area' (according to 'Running 
> headers and footers' proposal [1])?

As you point out, there are other dates and times an author might want in
the running headers and footers.  The content property by itself and the
content property along with CSS3 named strings [3] would allow the document
author to place any number of dates and times in the headers and footers.

For example:
h1 { string-set: chapter content() }
@page {
  margin: 10%;
  @top-center { content: string(chapter) }
}

I think that how the author gets the content to be inserted into the
header/footer is outside the realm of CSS as it stands, even in CSS3. 

However, I can see (in a vague/indefinite way) how some kind of interaction
between a document's meta data and CSS content, would be useful to access.

Here's an example of doing this with a script:

<span class="note">Last update:<br>
<script><!-- hide from non-javaScript browsers
var modidate = document.lastModified
document.write ( modidate )
// stop hiding--></script>
</span>

If the browser's CSS parser could execute this and the value of content were
extended to be PCDATA, then you could do:

@page {
 @top-center: { content: <span class="note">Last update:<br><script><!--
hide from non-javaScript browsers
var modidate = document.lastModified
document.write ( modidate )
// stop hiding--></script>
</span>
}

--
Jim

Received on Friday, 9 January 2004 15:25:36 UTC