Re: lynx-dev LYNX: sometimes need <br><br> to generate blank line

[David Woolley]

> Right, they screwed up.  More likely, their html-GENERATOR-app
> screwed up.  Or maybe they used it wrong.

It's simpler than that.  They were under the misapprehension that
HTML is a WYSIWYG word processor system and entered a paragraph the
way they do with their word processor, or more precisely, the way
they would have done with an electric typewriter, as most people
are just as bad at using word processors as authoring HTML.

Actually, in Word, return indicates paragraph, and you have to use
something else for the equivalent of br.  Even though Word has a powerful
style sheet system that only works well with single paragraph marks,
most people enter empty paragraphs between their paragraphs - I even do
it so as not to confuse people who are going to edit the document.

People have a great deal of difficult thinking structure, which, in
my view is why most web pages would be better in PDF (it wouldn't help
Lynx, but media that differs significantly from that used for authoring
requires users who understand structure).  (Actually, with the right
authoring tools - not Word and Windows (they introduce a lot of micro
spacing making the real spaces difficult to find) - you can recover plain
text from PDF reasonably well.)

Unfortunately <br> is such an awkward element that it can't even
be handled well by style sheets, otherwise the, long term, general
solution would be a style sheet language.

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