Some little thing I'm not seeing on one of my pages

[tlvp]

There's a sequence of pages (in Polish, but this is really a styles
question so the language is immaterial), all laid out, at their beginnings,
as follows:

1) an 18-point bold primary title "Mahabharata",
2) an 18-point bold name + numeral "Opowieść 125:" (or 122, 123, 124,...)
3) an 18-point bold chapter name,
4) a blank line,
5) the polish word "opowiada" (for 'retold by'),
6) another blank line,
7) the name of the reteller,

and then more boilerplate followed, finally, by the meat of the page.

There's something I'm not seeing on the page for Opowieść 124, viz.

<http://tlvp.net/~b.mikolajewska/booknook/Mahabharata/Opow-124.htm>

in the styling for that third 18-point line, for as one progresses from 122
sequentially through to 126, the line with "opowiada" (along with
everything below that point) jogs down by just a tiny tad at 124, and then
jogs back up again to the level it occupies in all the chapters before and
after 124.

(Files all named Opow-12?.htm , ?=2, 3, 4, 5, 6, in the same directory.)

While I'm ready to shrug my shoulders at it and let it pass, I'm puzzled as
heck how the styling for that line in Opow-124.htm differs from the
stylings for that line in all the other nearby Opow-12? files (?=2, 3, 5, 6
anyway). Yes, I know, it may be the price I must expect to pay if I mean to
let MS Word write my HTML for me. But this is a spousal joint effort, with
spouse creating the Polish work in Word and letting Word HTML-ify it, and
YT (i.e., me) cleaning up the ugly and invalid MS-isms so that at least the
HTML validates (I've never quite dared test the CSS :-{ ).

So: if the etiology of the jog down in 124 is apparent to someone, I'd be
glad to learn it, and attempt an appropriate repair; and if not, I can only
beg your forgiveness for having tried to set you this fool's errand as a
task. In either event, I thank you in advance for your efforts and your
findings, and I offer you my best Easter cheer.

-- tlvp
--
Avant de repondre, jeter la poubelle, SVP.

[Molly Mockford]

At 00:40:33 on Sat, 7 Apr 2012, tlvp <mPiOsUcB...@att.net> wrote
in <1ombf4u8kqfi$.14l4d4t5i2nn3$.d...@40tude.net>:

>in the styling for that third 18-point line, for as one progresses from 122
>sequentially through to 126, the line with "opowiada" (along with
>everything below that point) jogs down by just a tiny tad at 124, and then
>jogs back up again to the level it occupies in all the chapters before and
>after 124.

Just a thought, but have you tried the experiment of substituting the
chapter name for 124 with one from 123 or 125, for instance, to
establish which characters may be responsible for the jog? I notice
that 124 is the only one with italics in the chapter name, and although
I haven't checked the CSS I'm wondering whether it is a possibility that
italics have somehow acquired a slightly larger margin-top (or
padding-top) than non-italics?
--
Molly Mockford
Nature loves variety. Unfortunately, society hates it. (Milton Diamond Ph.D.)
(My Reply-To address *is* valid, though may not remain so for ever.)

[Jukka K. Korpela]

2012-04-07 9:29, Molly Mockford wrote:

> I notice that
> 124 is the only one with italics in the chapter name, and although I
> haven't checked the CSS I'm wondering whether it is a possibility that
> italics have somehow acquired a slightly larger margin-top (or
> padding-top) than non-italics?

Well spotted! If you open the page in Firefox with Firebug installed and
right-click on the italicized word "dharmy", select "Inspect Element
with Firebug", you can see that there is nothing special in the CSS
settings*), in the "Style" tab, but in the "Computed" tab you can see
that it has a line-height of 29px. This forces the line-height of the
enclosing element to 29px too, whereas on pages without italicized word
there, it's 27px.

It's difficult to say what what to do. My usual advice is

* { line-height: 1.2; }

or something similar (with the numeric value depending on the fonts
used), but this would affect in principle all elements on the page. It
normally levels down unnecessary variation (caused e.g. by different
font families inside text), but it may also level things down too much
in rare cases (e.g., a tall character getting procrustenated).

*) I mean nothing special as compared with the enclosing element and the
page in general. I won't let myself get started preaching against 10pt
sans-serif font, unlimited column width, justification without
hyphenation, etc. :-)

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

[Jukka K. Korpela]

2012-04-07 9:57, I (Jukka K. Korpela) wrote:

> This forces the line-height of the
> enclosing element to 29px too, whereas on pages without italicized word
> there, it's 27px.

This sounded very odd when I wrote it, but after returning to the issue
now, I can confirm this. Minimal demo:

<style>
p { font-size: 18pt; font-family: Times New Roman; font-weight: bold }
</style>
Hello <i>world</i> out <span>there</span>

If you check out actual line-height values as shown by Firefox, they are
29px for the <i> element, 27px for the <span> element.

So the bold italic version of Times New Roman in declared 18pt size is
taken as 2px taller than bold normal. There's no law against this, but
it is unexpected and odd to me.
--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

[Philip Herlihy]

In article <jloofr$263$1...@dont-email.me>, jkor...@cs.tut.fi says...

>

> *) I mean nothing special as compared with the enclosing element and the
> page in general. I won't let myself get started preaching against 10pt
> sans-serif font, unlimited column width, justification without
> hyphenation, etc. :-)

I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on justification and
hyphenation, in case (as is likely) I'm missing something?

--

Phil, London

[Jukka K. Korpela]

Justification tends to cause bad formatting due to large gaps between
words, if no word division is applied. And browsers don't apply word
division by default.

You can see this if you look at the page discussed,
http://tlvp.net/~b.mikolajewska/booknook/Mahabharata/Opow-124.htm
using a browser window width that is comfortable for normal reading
(probably something like one third or one fourth of the width of your
screen when using a normal desktop monitor). On excessively long lines
(say longer that 80 characters), the effect is not that noticeable, as
browsers divide the extra spacing between word spaces. But using a
reasonable width, there will be gaps.

For very simple English texts, which make heavy use of one-syllable or
two-syllable words, rarely saying anything sophisticated or
supercalifragistic, justification without hyphenation may produce
tolerable results. But not for texts that have long words.

There are many ways to make browsers do some word division, but none of
them is really satisfactory, and they all come with problems.

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

[tlvp]

On Sat, 7 Apr 2012 07:29:23 +0100, Molly Mockford wrote:

> At 00:40:33 on Sat, 7 Apr 2012, tlvp <mPiOsUcB...@att.net> wrote
> in <1ombf4u8kqfi$.14l4d4t5i2nn3$.d...@40tude.net>:
>
>>in the styling for that third 18-point line, for as one progresses from 122
>>sequentially through to 126, the line with "opowiada" (along with
>>everything below that point) jogs down by just a tiny tad at 124, and then
>>jogs back up again to the level it occupies in all the chapters before and
>>after 124.
>
> Just a thought, but have you tried the experiment of substituting the
> chapter name for 124 with one from 123 or 125, for instance, to
> establish which characters may be responsible for the jog? I notice
> that 124 is the only one with italics in the chapter name, and although
> I haven't checked the CSS I'm wondering whether it is a possibility that
> italics have somehow acquired a slightly larger margin-top (or
> padding-top) than non-italics?

Thank you, Molly, for correctly pinning the blame on the italics :-) !
And thank you, Jukka, for explaining just why the italics are guilty!

So, now, up to me whether:

(a) to declare, inline, that *that* particular line should have
line-height 27px (like its non-italic predecessors), but risk unforeseeable
consequences on the part of any viewer using other-than-default
page-viewing size options, or

(b) make one of the [space] characters on each preceding 18-point line
/italic/, too, so that the same 29px line-height applies to all three of
those lines, whether there's any visible italic alpha characters or not, or

(c) simply, as the song would have it, "let it be".

And, yes, Jukka, I personally agree as regards forcible 10 pt font,
full-screen column-width, flush-both justification, all being worth
avoiding. But peace in the family comes first -- I'm content with the
smaller victory of just having learned how to strip these files of their
bloated MS-isms enough to get the HTML to validate successfully :-) .

Many thanks for your analyses, both. Happy Easter. And cheers, -- tlvp

[tlvp]

On Sat, 07 Apr 2012 09:57:02 +0300, Jukka K. Korpela wrote:

> ... If you open the page in Firefox with Firebug installed and ...

Thanks, Jukka, for that incidental hint: I'd been blithely unaware of
Firebug and its capabilities, but I've installed that now, /grace a vous/.

Cheers, -- tlvp

[tlvp]

On Sat, 7 Apr 2012 16:31:49 -0400, tlvp wrote:

> Thank you, Molly, for correctly pinning the blame on the italics :-) !
> And thank you, Jukka, for explaining just why the italics are guilty!
>
> So, now, up to me whether:
>
> (a) to declare, inline, that *that* particular line should have

> line-height 27px (like its non-italic predecessors) ...

I tried that. On my local HD, using only IE 7, it seems that appending to
the end of the in-line style attribute for that particular third line (with
the italics in parentheses) the declaration

; line-height:27px

does not quite solve the visible problem -- but it comes close. Instead,

; line-height:26px

is what solves it -- *for that particular browser instance*. Alas, for FF
3.6.28, it's the 27px of Jukka's findings that has the desired effect. So
specifying line-height in pixels is no universal solution.

Perhaps specifying line-height (in pixels) for *all 3 18-point lines*, in
all the Opow'-* files of that series, maybe that's the way to solve it? Or

> (b) make one of the [space] characters on each preceding 18-point line
> /italic/, too, so that the same 29px line-height applies to all three of
> those lines, whether there's any visible italic alpha characters or not, or
>
> (c) simply, as the song would have it, "let it be".

Still mulling over my options. [Spouse would choose option (c).]

Cheers, -- tlvp

[tlvp]

On Sat, 07 Apr 2012 22:20:10 +0300, Jukka K. Korpela wrote:

> Justification tends to cause bad formatting due to large gaps between

> words, if no word division is applied. ... look at the page discussed,
> http://tlvp.net/~b.mikolajewska/booknook/Mahabharata/Opow-124.htm
> using a browser window width that is ... something like ... one fourth of
> ... a normal desktop monitor ...

Very true. It is thought, though, that most serial viewers of these
Mahabharata pages will more than likely be directing those pages to print,
where lines will be both perceptibly shorter than full-screen-width, yet
not so short as to suffer unduly from the longish inter-word spaces that
the Polish language's proclivity towards *l-o-n-g* words tends to induce.

I know -- good excuses are a dime a dozen (DE: "a gute Ausred' is' drei
Batzen wert"), but still, as I can afford that ... ;-) .

Cheers, -- tlvp

[tlvp]

On Sat, 7 Apr 2012 16:31:49 -0400, tlvp wrote:

> Thank you, Molly, for correctly pinning the blame on the italics :-) !
> And thank you, Jukka, for explaining just why the italics are guilty!
>
> So, now, up to me whether:
>

> ... (b) make one of the [space] characters on each preceding 18-point line

> /italic/, too, so that the same 29px line-height applies to all three of
> those lines, whether there's any visible italic alpha characters or not, or

Here's what works, for now, though it's an extremely opportunistic kludge:

Replace the very first space character in those third lines, in every
Opow-*.htm file, by an italic NBSP:

<i>&nbsp;</i> .

Makes each such line share all the line-height characteristics of the line
with that italicised, parenthesized "dharma" in it, or so it seems, as it
eliminates the annoying "jogging" up or down.

(But italicising a mere space seems not to have the same curative effect.)

Anyway, the Mahabharata site does *not* yet reflect such changes.

But the unexpected things that'll come out to bite you, eh? Cheers, -- tlvp

[Dr J R Stockton]

In comp.infosystems.www.authoring.stylesheets message <1ombf4u8kqfi$.14l
4d4t5i2nn3$.d...@40tude.net>, Sat, 7 Apr 2012 00:40:33, tlvp
<mPiOsUcB...@att.net> posted:

> But this is a spousal joint effort, with
>spouse creating the Polish work in Word and letting Word HTML-ify it, and
>YT (i.e., me) cleaning up the ugly and invalid MS-isms so that at least the
>HTML validates (I've never quite dared test the CSS :-{ ).

It might be easier in the end to view the spousal writing in Word, then
Select All, Copy, paste into your favourite editor, save, and apply
known-good markup.

If it is a repeated task, you would build a CSS file to help with
spousal requirements; and you could pre-process the saved file with a
MiniTrue or other script, etc., to do routine parts like marking
paragraphs with <p> </p>.

--
(c) John Stockton, nr London, UK. ?@merlyn.demon.co.uk Turnpike 6.05 WinXP.
Web <http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/> - FAQ-type topics, acronyms, and links.
Command-prompt MiniTrue is useful for viewing/searching/altering files. Free,
DOS/Win/UNIX now 2.0.6; see <URL:http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/pc-links.htm>.

[tlvp]

On Sun, 8 Apr 2012 19:23:27 +0100, Dr J R Stockton wrote:

> It might be easier in the end to view the spousal writing in Word, then
> Select All, Copy, paste into your favourite editor, save, and apply
> known-good markup.

I'm sure it would be, if we had any "known-good markup."

> If it is a repeated task, you would build a CSS file to help with ...

Bingo! "build a CSS file ... ." There's the 'gotcha', in my case :-) .

> ... spousal requirements; and you could pre-process the saved file with a

> MiniTrue or other script, etc., to do routine parts like marking
> paragraphs with <p> </p>.

Thanks very much for this work-flow suggestion, John. I'd love to be in a
position to be able to adopt it. For now, though, I think I'll have to be
content to continue to limp along with the crutches that I have, and with
the little bit of "help from my friends" here that I've come to call on now
and again :-) .

Cheers, and thanks again, -- tlvp

[Dr J R Stockton]

In comp.infosystems.www.authoring.stylesheets message <1szvq2jmh8jn2$.1q
2nutktvpeg9$.d...@40tude.net>, Mon, 9 Apr 2012 00:16:53, tlvp
<mPiOsUcB...@att.net> posted:

>Thanks very much for this work-flow suggestion, John. I'd love to be in a
>position to be able to adopt it. For now, though, I think I'll have to be
>content to continue to limp along with the crutches that I have, and with
>the little bit of "help from my friends" here that I've come to call on now
>and again :-) .

That document would be easier to read if paragraphs were separated by a
visible blank line.

Formatting that page, starting with copy'n'paste of the visible text
into an editor which knows the Polish alphabet, would be very easy with
CSS and some systematic substitutions for paragraph gaps, especially if
the lady is told that your sanity can best be preserved if the layout
achieved only needs to be substantially similar.

The header and footer, I guess, can just be copied over, if it changes
little between pages.

I see that the layout of the original English is simpler than on the
page cited earlier - eschew surplusage (but keep short paragraphs).

The formatting commands of the Polish are by Microsoft, and excessively
bloated - see
<http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/quotings.htm#Alfonso> <g>.

If Herself is essentially just translating into Polish, and there is no
need for publication in Word, then I think you'd jointly do better if
she just typed plaintext Polish into a good text editor to give to you
to style.

Reading that page with Google Chrome translating into English for me, I
see that a few Polish words proved untranslatable. I guess Herself
knows more Polish than Google does; but it might be worth checking those
in the translated version to see if, possibly, Herself has occasionally
made a Polish typo or used an unnecessarily obscure Polish word.
Example :

The king should do the same forcing everyone to realize wcasnych duties.

[tlvp]

On Tue, 10 Apr 2012 21:46:46 +0100, Dr J R Stockton wrote, inter aliae:

> Reading that page with Google Chrome translating into English for me, I
> see that a few Polish words proved untranslatable.

Not "untranslatable" -- just beyond Google's ken :-) . Google Translate is
actually pretty inept, something I've come to notice even for languages I'm
not really all that strong in: but when I know what it's supposed to mean,
and Google hasn't a clue, I draw an obvious inference.

Forgive me for responding here only to one tangential aspect of your long
and thoughtful collection of suggestions. Please believe me when I tell you
that I appreciate them all.

Thanks; and cheers, -- tlvp

[dorayme]

In article <e4q6ktqgkc01$.15kvsfpny0yhe$.d...@40tude.net>,

tlvp <mPiOsUcB...@att.net> wrote:

> Google Translate is
> actually pretty inept,

Is this compared with a human translator or another better bot?

>
> Forgive me for responding here only to one tangential aspect of your long
> and thoughtful collection of suggestions. Please believe me when I tell you
> that I appreciate them all.

If you sent him five pigs, two cows, eight sheep and two dozen
chickens, it would be *particularly* persuasive.

--
dorayme

[tlvp]

On Tue, 10 Apr 2012 21:46:46 +0100, Dr J R Stockton wrote:

> That document would be easier to read if paragraphs were separated by a
> visible blank line.

I guess you're referring here to the page as the browsing public sees it?
[For in the actual HTML source the paragraphs *are* separated by visible
blank lines (unless your downloader is compressing all white space to a
single [space] character).]

I suppose I would agree with you, but mine is but to mediate the stylistic
preferences of the tales' reteller, which dictate: short indent at start of
paragraph, no leading between successive paragraphs, and as small a serif
typeface as is still consistent with legibility.

> The header and footer, I guess, can just be copied over, if it changes
> little between pages.

Indeed very little changes in those tables atop and below the page proper:
only the content of the cells for the next and previous numbered "Opow."
and their links and their title="" text selections vary.

> If ... there is no
> need for publication in Word, then ...

Ah, but there is. Each bundle of 15-25 Opow.s makes up a Volume of a print
collection that's apt to run into 9 or 10 Volumes of some 400 pages each,
roughly, jointly holding all 18 Books of the Mahabharata (I-II, III, IV-V,
VI-VII, VIII-XI, XII/a, XII/b, and probably XIII-XIV and XV-XVIII (unless
we've misjudged page counts and need to reassign Books XIII-XVIII through
three Volumes).

And, though there's software more fit for purpose, we're using Word as our
compositing/layout/PDF-making software for the book pages (designing for
standard book-page size of 6" x 9", or even 5.5" x 8.5", with inked area
about 4.25 x 7.5) -- and even for the cover :-) . In fact, the first few
Volumes we imposed, printed, folded, stacked into book blocks, jogged,
pressed, glued, bound, and trimmed, all by our own little selves before
listing them on Amazon for sale. (Later Volumes we farmed out to one or
another PoD house.)

So, well, yes, there's a reason Word enters the work flow here.

(And: yes, I wish there weren't :-) .)

As for "wćasnych" (in section 3 of Opow-124), in the phrase

> The king should do the same forcing everyone to realize wcasnych duties ,

and my earlier disparaging comments about Google Translate, I must withdraw
those comments, apologize to Google Translate, and thank both it and you --
for having uncovered a blatant typo: should have been "własnych" ( =
"(their) own"), and will soon be -- nay, now *is* -- just that :-) .

[Etiology: misremembering the Unicode CP 322 as 263 :-) .]

[tlvp]

On Wed, 11 Apr 2012 14:40:02 +1000, dorayme wrote:

> In article <e4q6ktqgkc01$.15kvsfpny0yhe$.d...@40tude.net>,
> tlvp <mPiOsUcB...@att.net> wrote:
>
>> Google Translate is
>> actually pretty inept,
>
> Is this compared with a human translator or another better bot?

As a translation service. Is there a better bot? AltaVista's BabbleFish
used to be pretty laughable in its day as I recall ... but I know no other.

>> Forgive me for responding here only to one tangential aspect of your long
>> and thoughtful collection of suggestions. Please believe me when I tell you
>> that I appreciate them all.
>
> If you sent him five pigs, two cows, eight sheep and two dozen
> chickens, it would be *particularly* persuasive.

Ya mean ... (gulp) ... he's not vegan :-) ? Anyway, the Twelve Days of
Christmas are long since gone by now, I fear, and all those creatures have,
alas, gone stale. But thanks for the idea, do. Cheers, -- tlvp

[Dr J R Stockton]

In comp.infosystems.www.authoring.stylesheets message <v6m1wdmkow9q$.14x
4gwgjy4...@40tude.net>, Wed, 11 Apr 2012 00:51:36, tlvp
<mPiOsUcB...@att.net> posted:

>On Tue, 10 Apr 2012 21:46:46 +0100, Dr J R Stockton wrote:
>
>> That document would be easier to read if paragraphs were separated by a
>> visible blank line.
>
>I guess you're referring here to the page as the browsing public sees it?

Yes.

>I suppose I would agree with you, but mine is but to mediate the stylistic
>preferences of the tales' reteller, which dictate: short indent at start of
>paragraph, no leading between successive paragraphs, and as small a serif
>typeface as is still consistent with legibility.

That "small serif ... legibility" presumes a knowledge of the state of
the readers' displays and their eyes. The right move is to allow the
readers' default settings to stand, and to tweak the ones on the spousal
machine.

For the inter-paragraph leading - you can set that on all P elements
with CSS, then surreptitiously raise it until Herself is trained to
prefer a decent gap.

Seek the word "tortoise" in
<http://www.scribd.com/doc/28378371/The-Theory-of-Practical-
Joking-RV-Jones>.

Or you could have a button to toggle between author's and reader's
preferences.

And test your work with Firefox/Safari Zoom Text Only (which scribd
omitted).

--
(c) John Stockton, Surrey, UK. ?@merlyn.demon.co.uk Turnpike v6.05 MIME.
Web <http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/> - FAQish topics, acronyms, & links.
Proper <= 4-line sig. separator as above, a line exactly "-- " (SonOfRFC1036)
Do not Mail News to me. Before a reply, quote with ">" or "> " (SonOfRFC1036)