Re: LYNX-DEV Lynx text formatting queries

[Jan Hlavacek]

On Wed, Apr 01, 1998 at 05:22:18PM -0500, Jacob Poon wrote:
> When a block of unindented, left justified text is displayed, Lynx puts 3
> spaces before each line, unless it is enclosed by the heading tags (eg: 
> <h1>..</h1>).  I have tested both Netscape and Mosaic, and they both put
> unindented, left justified, non-heading texts to first column instead of
> inserting spaces, for graphical and text versions.  

Another reason I don't use Netscape or Mosaic.

> So I doubt if Lynx is rendering such texts incorrectly by inserting
> spaces before each line. 

There is no "correct" way how to render such a text.   It is purely
the programmer's choice.

> Anyway, I think I don't think those spaces should be added at the first
> place since they make the rendered document longer, and doesn't improve
> visibility. 

This is a matter of opinion and, perhaps,  habit.  I like them there. It
makes the text more readable for me, and it hepls me distinguish
headings from ordinary text.  

It shouldn't be a big problem to modify the source so the text starts in
the first collumn.

Hopefully lynx would one day support user style sheets,  where you will
be able to define presentation details like this.

> When I got more than 100 links in an ordered list (eg Lynx bookmark),
> further list numbers no longer aligned to the dot, but becomes
> left-justified.  In Netscape, number is still aligned to the dot in such
> cases.  Maybe there's an internal limit for this? 

The reason is that lynx cannot know at the beginning of the list that
the list is going to have more than 99 items.  So lynx,  perhaps in an
attempt to save a screen space,  reserves only 2 characters for the
number.  Lists of this length are not that common,  and,  frankly,  I
can live with this problem pretty well.  

Again,  you can probably easily modify the source so lynx will reserve 3
characters,  and you won't have this problem,  at least until your
bookmarks grow to 1000 items :-)

lahvak
-- 
Jan Hlav\'{a}\v{c}ek
address@hidden  (Blind Carbon Copies will bounce)
www: http://www.math.ohio-state.edu/~lahvak/