Re: Re: regions/contexts - printable HTML (fwd)

Scott E. Preece (preece@predator.urbana.mcd.mot.com)
Fri, 16 Feb 1996 10:30:38 -0600


From: lilley <lilley@afs.mcc.ac.uk>
| Yes, absolutely. For example, this is expressible now in CSS1
|
| html { color: #000; background: #FFF; margin-top: 60pt; margin-bottom:40pt }
| html { margin-left: 90pt; margin-right; 90pt }
| h1, h2, h3 { font-family: helvetica }
| .noprint { display: none }
|
| That sets document-wide margins, defines any element with
| class="noprint" not to be displayed - oh, and sets major headings in
| Helvetica.
---

The stylesheet proposal still doesn't provide a mechanism for defining headers/footers, page numbering conventions, etc. The content of headers and footers (as opposed to their form) probably is content, rather than style.

---
|   > Except for the pagebreak, since that has to be in the content.
|
|   Disagree.  How do you know where the page finishes?  This depends on the
|   particular font size used and the precise position of linebreaks and so
|   on ...
---

This has been discussed before. There are two separate needs. One, to control where content breaks between presentation pages, probably belongs in the stylesheet, using DIV as a carrier. The other, to indicate where "reference-able" pages break (that is, where page breaks occur in the corresponding published hardcopy or pre-formatted version), probably belongs in the body (maybe as a designated type of anchor). A smart browser might try to align printed pages with reference-able pages by adjusting type size, spacing, and margins.

---
|   Other handy things a print stylesheet might do include putting the
|   title, url, last modify date and so on in headers or footers, as some
|   browsers do now.
---

The form of the headers/footers belongs in the stylesheet, but the content that goes into parameters used in the form goes in the document. That is, the stylesheet should allow you to say you want the running-head and page-number elements at the top and the creation-date and author at the bottom of each page, and, possibly, that the first page is to have special treatment, or that odd-even pages are treated differently, but the definition of what goes in the elements positioned in the headers and footers (like running-head, author, and creation-date) are content and should be in the document (possibly in HEAD elements).

---
|   > ><PRINT NOPRINT>
|   > >This region will not be printed, only seen
|
|   > ><PRINT NOREAD>
|   > >This region will not be seen, but will be printed
|
|   This is readilly accomplished with css1 by using two classes - 
|   say noprint and noview - as used above.
---

Well, maybe. What element are you going to put the CLASS on? DIV is possible; I'm not entirely happy with the effect on the semantics of DIV (a table-of-contents builder, for instance, would need to be aware that some DIVs might be invisible, which would involve a tricky interaction between stylesheet and tool)...

scott

--
scott preece
motorola/mcg urbana design center	1101 e. university, urbana, il   61801
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