It would help A LOT if you would give a more precise reference to
"the proposed HTML 3.0 specification." That document is under revision,
and changes substantially now and again. Please give the date of the
draft you're looking at, and if possible, a URL. It's doesn't hurt
to excerpt the text you're talking about, either.
For example:
http://www.w3.org/hypertext/WWW/MarkUp/html3/html3.dtd
Tue Mar 28 12:44:04 1995
<!-- Desired widths are used for negotiating image size
with the module responsible for painting the image.
align=left or right cause image to float to margin
and for subsequent text to wrap around image -->
<!ELEMENT IMG - O EMPTY -- Embedded image -->
<!ATTLIST IMG
%attrs;
src %URI; #REQUIRED -- URI of image to embed --
%url.link; -- standard link attributes --
alt CDATA #IMPLIED -- for display in place of image --
align (top|middle|bottom|left|right) top -- relative to baseline
-- width NUMBER #IMPLIED -- desired width in en's or pixels --
height NUMBER #IMPLIED -- desired height in en's or pixels --
units (en|pixels) pixels -- units for width and height --
ismap (ismap) #IMPLIED -- pass clicks to server --
>
I don't see how en units are device specific. They're relative to the
font size. OK, for speech, this is meaningless. But giving image sizes
is an "expedient hack" for optimizing the speed of laying out pages
online, as far as I can tell. If you don't like it, don't use it.
But I don't see what harm it does.
Dan