I agree to some extent, but I find the idea of document controlled pagination
limiting, regardless of the technical implementation. There are currently a
lot of people looking at what it would take for a browser to run on a game
platform (or set top box) hooked to a tv, or wireless terminals etc. The
model of the browser with a big monitor connected to a desktop computer,
serving pages of text may prove short lived. I think it would be a mistake
to assume a "page" environment for html development. What is a page? Only
the browser (tied to the hardware) will know. Just because the existing
content of the world is primarily based on 8x11 pieces of paper, I don't
think the future of HTML needs to be. Let's organize documents based on the
logical flow of content, not just text, and not just "pages". Perhaps we
need to move away from the concept of "documents" as well, into something
more generic. "Experiences"? Let us not forget that it is the experience of
the user, not the author, that matters most.
Just my opinion,
George
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I kind of agree with the line of thought that says that it would
be better to put pagination control for a particular media in
style sheets. The general model of HTML is not trying to be
tied to a scrolling or paged display/media, it's trying to
represent text in a form that adapts to many media. Trying
to do things as if HTML was, say Quark Expess, gets into trouble fast.
If I wanted to adapt HMTL to paged output in particular, what I'd
want more than hard page breaks, would be conditional control of
where page breaks could occur. (So the results would make sense
in different font and paper sizes.)
I just looked, and this _has_ been addressed in the draft of CSS1
See:
http://www.w3.org/hypertext/WWW/TR/WD-css1#page
--
Albert Lunde Albert-Lunde@nwu.edu