Re: LYNX-DEV <tab indent=xx> handling

[Foteos Macrides]

Karl-Johan Noren <address@hidden> wrote:
>Not necessarily a bug, rather a feature, but an annoying one.
>
>When the HTML3 tag <tab> is used with the indent=3Dxx attribute
>the indentation is not counted from the current indentation
>of the text, but from the beginning of the screen, even though
>the basic indentation of three spaces is used.

        The HTML 3.0 draft didn't say whether the indentation should
be with respect to the full window or current left margin.  The value
is in en units, which is also a problem, in that there is no difference
between and en and em units for a character cell terminal.  So I treated
en as two per character cell width, and chose the full window, so that
for an 80 column screen you can specify 2 to 158 (the right-most column
always is reserved for the cursor).  The idea was to specify tab stops
for the initial line together with IDs, and thereafter be able to use
TO and be sure whatever you want lined up will in fact be lined up,
regardless of the style, and without need to know the first and
second line indent definitions for every style.


>This is rather inconsistent handling, and might cause problems
>when the <tab> tag gets more widespread and used.

        You need not worry about TAB becoming "widespread and used".
TAB, FIG, the PLAIN attribute for UL, and the CONTINUE attribute
for OL, are now Lynxisms, UdiWWWisms and EmacsWWWisms, and only
Lynxers actually use TAB. :) :)

        Oops, forgot to include BANNER in that list. :) :)

                                Fote

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