You don't understand graphic designers!
Jeff Walker
manipulate HTML into some sort of page layout language, and impatient
or insulting responses from HTML purists telling them to forget it.
That they need to trust the browser, let the browser decide how the
page will look. Content, not presentation, they admonish.
To a graphic designer, this is like hearing they have to send their
jobs to a printer and let the printer decide what fonts to use, what
colors, where elements are placed.
"Logical" is appealing from a theoretical standpoint, but in the real
world folks want "physical" results. Especially with more graphic
designers coming on board. They want more control over how their
pages will look, and who can blame them?
--
Jeff Walker + jeffx + graphics + websites + athens
je...@negia.net
http://www.negia.net/~jeffx/jeffx.html
Jerry Kindall
>Everywhere I look I see postings from people wanting to know how to
>manipulate HTML into some sort of page layout language, and impatient
>or insulting responses from HTML purists telling them to forget it.
>That they need to trust the browser, let the browser decide how the
>page will look. Content, not presentation, they admonish.
>
>To a graphic designer, this is like hearing they have to send their
>jobs to a printer and let the printer decide what fonts to use, what
>colors, where elements are placed.
>
>"Logical" is appealing from a theoretical standpoint, but in the real
>world folks want "physical" results. Especially with more graphic
>designers coming on board. They want more control over how their
>pages will look, and who can blame them?
Which is why there are things like PDF.
>--
>Jeff Walker + jeffx + graphics + websites + athens
>je...@negia.net
>http://www.negia.net/~jeffx/jeffx.html
--
Jerry Kindall (kin...@manual.com)
Manual Labor: We Wrote The Book!
http://www.manual.com/home/
PALINDROME #5 IN A SERIES: Collect 'em all!
Evil I did dwell, lewd did I live.
DocOzone
(Jerry Kindall) wrote:
: In article <317A99...@negia.net>, Jeff Walker <je...@negia.net> wrote:
:
: >They want more control over how their
: >pages will look, and who can blame them?
:
: Which is why there are things like PDF.
:
Let's face it, PDF sucks, IMO. I'm really sick of hearing folks who are
obviously *not* Graphic Designers telling us all to start using it and
leave the WWW alone. Do you work for Adobe or what? The file sizes are too
big, you need a frigging *viewer* to use it, let's face it folks, it is
*not* the solution. I'm a graphic designer, and my medium is the World
Wide Web. Live with it, there's more of us than there are of you.
-DocOzone-
------------------------------------------------------------
Thaddeus "Doc" Ozone <http://www.winternet.com/~drozone/>
"Specialization is for insects."
Warren Steel
> Everywhere I look I see postings from people wanting to know how to
> manipulate HTML into some sort of page layout language, and impatient
> or insulting responses from HTML purists telling them to forget it.
> That they need to trust the browser, let the browser decide how the
> page will look. Content, not presentation, they admonish.
> To a graphic designer, this is like hearing they have to send their
> jobs to a printer and let the printer decide what fonts to use, what
> colors, where elements are placed.
I understand graphic designers; it is perfectly understandable
that such persons would wish to have control over the appearance
of their product. "HTML purists" do not prevent them from doing
so--it is the diverse nature of the World Wide Web that does so.
Diverse platforms, browsers, user configurations, are not a figment
of Tim B-L's imagination--they exist, and hypertext markup (as
a scalable platform- and device-independent structural "hyperglue"
linking various media) is designed to come to terms with this
undeniable fact. As I've said before, I don't know any "HTML
purists," only "HTML pragmatists" who recognize the diversity
of users and platforms, and who embrace it and exploit it,
instead of railing in vain that things are not as they wish!
> "Logical" is appealing from a theoretical standpoint, but in the real
> world folks want "physical" results. Especially with more graphic
> designers coming on board. They want more control over how their
> pages will look, and who can blame them?
Graphic designers who can grasp the nature and requirements of
the Web have the potential to benefit all of us. One way this
could happen is if a skilled team of artists and programmers were
to design a browser that was fully configurable, but in which most
possible configurations could potentially be legible, "logical,"
and esthetically pleasing. And for those graphic designers who
cannot or will not come to terms with HTML, there are alternatives
available, such as PDF. Sure, this may currently be an inefficient,
proprietary format with bloated filesizes, but with proper design
and development, it has the potential to serve artists' needs in a
way that HTML cannot.
Do not blame purists, or the W3 Consortium (which consists of
Netscape, Microsoft, Sun, Spyglass, among others), or some other
simister cabal for the role of HTML as a unifying element on the
Web. Demand implementation of style sheets; ask your browser to
implement Figures and dozens of other HTML 3.0 elements and
attributes that make HTML more graphic-friendly; or else
find, or make, another language that serves this purpose
equally well on all platforms.
--
Warren Steel mu...@mail.olemiss.edu
Department of Music University of Mississippi
URL: http://www.mcsr.olemiss.edu/~mudws/
Callie
>Everywhere I look I see [snip] HTML purists telling them to forget it.
>That they need to trust the browser, let the browser decide how the
>page will look. Content, not presentation, they admonish.
>To a graphic designer, this is like hearing they have to send their
>jobs to a printer and let the printer decide what fonts to use, what
>colors, where elements are placed.
Jeff -
That is exactly what the Web does ... the page you so carefully
design on a MAC wwith a 17" monitor can end up on my SUN
workstation with a 21 inch monitor (I finally hit the big time and am
becoming one of the UNIX nerds I used to envy) either full-size
or as a bitty little box in the corner of the screen ... it's my
choice, not yours, because it is my hardware. At home it might
be on the 14" color monitor or on the monochrome LYNX setup.
And it's all the same audience, the same potential consumer,
and you never know which I'll be using.
>"Logical" is appealing from a theoretical standpoint, but in the real
>world folks want "physical" results. Especially with more graphic
>designers coming on board. They want more control over how their
>pages will look, and who can blame them?
I have bought print, specified fonts, and colors, and put in pretty
pictures. BUT, I didn't send a job that required a 6-color
Heidelberg, block-long million dollar press off to the corner
quik-copy place and then bitch about the results, or expect every
printer in town to be able to do laser-die cuts and perfect binding
and send them jobs with specs they couldn't handle and then
blame them.
The difference between the Web and print is this: with print, you
control the output device - the paper/ink. On the Web, the output
device can be anything, including the database at AltaVista and a
dial-up connection to a server that reads the pages to the user (just
released - dial-a-web).
The analogy for print - design a page that will look good on a
9x12, or maybe it will be a paperback, but then we're not sure if
we'll be using all those colors and pictures, and the whole thing
might end up as a radio ad anyway, but it still has to look good as a
business card and a subway poster. OK - graphics designer, how would
you handle that without creating a gazillion seperate pages?
Pure pragmatism - given a controlled hardware/software environment
any HTML purist would create something that took advantage
of all the features that made sense for the project. Given an out of
control environment, the practical thing to do is stay OFF the
bleeding edge of technology and play it conservative if the pages
are meant to be read by the world.
Callie
Cal...@writepage.com |The Write Page for genre fiction:
http://www.writepage.com |All the books that are fun to read.
Stewart Dean
>In article <317A99...@negia.net>, Jeff Walker <je...@negia.net> wrote:
>>Everywhere I look I see postings from people wanting to know how to
>>manipulate HTML into some sort of page layout language, and impatient
>>or insulting responses from HTML purists telling them to forget it.
>>That they need to trust the browser, let the browser decide how the
>>page will look. Content, not presentation, they admonish.
>>
>>To a graphic designer, this is like hearing they have to send their
>>jobs to a printer and let the printer decide what fonts to use, what
>>colors, where elements are placed. They want more control over how their
>>pages will look, and who can blame them?
>Which is why there are things like PDF.
Let's get on thing straight. People want to layout pages on HTML.
PDF is not HTML, it is not the same philosophy. Would I even
contemplate doing movie pages in PDF?
The future of HTML is not set in stone but one thing is sure, it will
become the things people want it to be.
If you want to help, guide it so it degrades well and is easy to
structure and understand. At the end of a day you can not control
what people want from the web.
Stewart Dean
Web Producer - Multimedia Head - Sugar Addict
Web Space: http://www.foresight.co.uk/stewart
H Doan
>Everywhere I look I see postings from people wanting to know how to
>manipulate HTML into some sort of page layout language, and impatient
>or insulting responses from HTML purists telling them to forget it.
>That they need to trust the browser, let the browser decide how the
>page will look. Content, not presentation, they admonish.
>
and designers... Its called browser detect and serving the document according
to the browser's particularities... If its Netscape, you can dish out mozilla
extensions. If its AOL or Samba, just dish out HTML 2.0 compliant pages..
>To a graphic designer, this is like hearing they have to send their
>jobs to a printer and let the printer decide what fonts to use, what
>colors, where elements are placed.
Well said..
There are things that will give you a controlled look... invisible gifs,
tables, and manipulation of width/height attributes..
Heck, I remember hacking away using invisible spaces and pre tags a year ago
because there was no <center> tag
>
>"Logical" is appealing from a theoretical standpoint, but in the real
>world folks want "physical" results. Especially with more graphic
>designers coming on board. They want more control over how their
>pages will look, and who can blame them?
I'd like to add--
A Web designer needs to have both a creative eye and a technical understanding
of browser differences, browser anomalies,bit depths and FULL familarity of
the HTML language.
-- HD
Virtual Works
www.vworks.com
Leland Scott
>
>
> Let's face it, PDF sucks, IMO. I'm really sick of hearing folks who are
> obviously *not* Graphic Designers telling us all to start using it and
> leave the WWW alone. Do you work for Adobe or what? The file sizes are too
> big, you need a frigging *viewer* to use it, let's face it folks, it is
> *not* the solution. I'm a graphic designer, and my medium is the World
> Wide Web. Live with it, there's more of us than there are of you.
I don't think even Adobe would claim that PDF was "the" solution. PDF
and HTML can and do peacefully coexist. PDF is "a" solution to many
problems in document dissemination. I don't think you're going to see
anybody putting up their home page in PDF, but PDF is a very reasonable
solution to the problem of publishing certain kinds of documents on the
Web. In addition to PDF's ability to render arbitrary page designs
created in any page layout package, it has other virtues that you may
not have considered.
For example, I recall just recently struggling to learn javascript by
using Netscape's javascript pages. Not only was accessing Netscape's
site often a problem, but once I was there I found it difficult moving
between the object section and the properties section and the
functions section and... in other words, doing all the cross-references
in a site that large and a topic that complex was just too tedious. I
found that someone had posted the Netscape javascript in a single PDF,
downloaded it, and then had the best of both worlds: A printable
document AND an electronic, searchable, hyperlinked document... on my
local system.
Leland Scott
Jacques Marcoux
In article <drozone-2104...@drozone.winternet.com> dro...@winternet.com (DocOzone) writes:
DocOzone> In article <kindall-2104...@ppp.manual.com>, kin...@manual.com
DocOzone> (Jerry Kindall) wrote:
DocOzone> : In article <317A99...@negia.net>, Jeff Walker <je...@negia.net> wrote:
DocOzone> Let's face it, PDF sucks, IMO. I'm really sick of hearing folks who are
DocOzone> obviously *not* Graphic Designers telling us all to start using it and
DocOzone> leave the WWW alone. Do you work for Adobe or what? The file sizes are too
DocOzone> big, you need a frigging *viewer* to use it, let's face it folks, it is
Why do you care? You're a graphic designer, remember? Not an UNIX nerd
...
DocOzone> *not* the solution. I'm a graphic designer, and my medium is the World
DocOzone> Wide Web. Live with it, there's more of us than there are of you.
--
______ ______
___/ /_______________________________________/ /_
/_ __//_____//_Jacques_//_Marcoux_//_____/_ __/
/_/ /_/
jmar...@cmc.doe.ca 514.421.4794
Jerry Kindall
dro...@winternet.com (DocOzone) wrote:
>In article <kindall-2104...@ppp.manual.com>, kin...@manual.com
>(Jerry Kindall) wrote:
>
>: In article <317A99...@negia.net>, Jeff Walker <je...@negia.net> wrote:
>:
>: >They want more control over how their
>: >pages will look, and who can blame them?
>:
>: Which is why there are things like PDF.
>
>Let's face it, PDF sucks, IMO. I'm really sick of hearing folks who are
>obviously *not* Graphic Designers telling us all to start using it and
>leave the WWW alone. Do you work for Adobe or what?
>The file sizes are too big
Not if you know what you're doing. Reduce your images to 72 DPI before
including them and make sure you use appropriate compression. (Most of
the really huge PDF files include 300 DPI [or higher resolution] TIFF
images with little or no compression.) I've seen some very nice and
compact PDF files. As with HTML you have to KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING
before you use PDF. Adjust your delivery to the medium. There is no
silver bullet that magically does everything.
>you need a frigging *viewer* to use it
I suppose it would be redundant to point out that you need a frigging
viewer to read HTML, too. In fact, it used to be you needed a frigging
viewer to see QuickTime, JPEG, sounds, and other media types, until they
were integrated into popular browsers. Which is better -- adding new
appearance-based tags to browsers, or establishing a way to embed new
media types in browsers? The only thing I really want to see is a way to
have a new media type automatically download and install the appropriate
plug-in if it's not already available.
Adobe's Amber plug-in does rectify some of PDF's problems (e.g. it works
inside Netscape, it anti-aliases fonts and graphics for easy on-screen
reading, it will eventually be able to do progressive display of PDF
documents and retrieve individual pages, it already supports URLs).
>let's face it folks, it is *not* the solution.
Not currently, but Adobe is working on it (OK, Amber is still in alpha,
but it works pretty well already). And Adobe is not a bunch of morons.
Notice I said there are thing_s_ _like_ PDF. If PDF is not a solution
that works for you, then use something that is.
If PDF doesn't float your boat, there's also Envoy, a somewhat similar
system; there's ShockWave for FreeHand and SW for Director. To various
extents all of these provide better page layout control than HTML ever
will, and they are all available today. Even better solutions are surely
on their way.
>I'm a graphic designer, and my medium is the World
>Wide Web. Live with it, there's more of us than there are of you.
Who is "us" and who is "you" in this sentence?
> -DocOzone-
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>Thaddeus "Doc" Ozone <http://www.winternet.com/~drozone/>
> "Specialization is for insects."
Calling yourself a graphic designer is rather specialized, no?
--
Jerry Kindall (kin...@manual.com)
Manual Labor: We Wrote The Book!
http://www.manual.com/home/
PALINDROME #10 IN A SERIES: Collect 'em all!
Madam, I am ill. I've nine men in evil Lima. I'm Adam.
Stewart Dean
>In article <drozone-2104...@drozone.winternet.com>,
>dro...@winternet.com (DocOzone) wrote:
>>In article <kindall-2104...@ppp.manual.com>, kin...@manual.com
>>(Jerry Kindall) wrote:
>>
>>: In article <317A99...@negia.net>, Jeff Walker <je...@negia.net> wrote:
>>:
>>: >They want more control over how their
>>: >pages will look, and who can blame them?
>>:
>>: Which is why there are things like PDF.
>>
>>Let's face it, PDF sucks, IMO. I'm really sick of hearing folks who are
>>obviously *not* Graphic Designers telling us all to start using it and
>>leave the WWW alone. Do you work for Adobe or what?
>>you need a frigging *viewer* to use it
>I suppose it would be redundant to point out that you need a frigging
>viewer to read HTML, too. In fact, it used to be you needed a frigging
>viewer to see QuickTime, JPEG, sounds, and other media types, until they
>were integrated into popular browsers.
The difference is PDF needs more hardware and software to run than
HTML. I takes time to prepare and is not garanteed to be readable for
you viewer.
For specialist uses maybe - but not for general web user stuff. Too
many plugins spoil the broth.
> Which is better -- adding new
>appearance-based tags to browsers, or establishing a way to embed new
>media types in browsers? The only thing I really want to see is a way to
>have a new media type automatically download and install the appropriate
>plug-in if it's not already available.
That's Java territory perhaps. Back to you first question, how about
tags that are ignored if you havnt the properly equiped browser? New
tags are on the way.
Fonts are a big issue at the moment with the likes of Mircosoft and
Bitstream limbering up to give us anti aliased fonts on demand.
Here's a quote from Bitstream:
"As Adobe/Apple/Netscape battle over font types with Microsoft,
Bitstream will remain neutral and deliver a solution that supports
everyone," said Ray Boelig, president and CEO of Bitstream. "Our goal
is to offer the industry the guarantee that their documents will
appear as they were originally intended."
See
and
http://www.microsoft.com/truetype/
For more details.
>Adobe's Amber plug-in does rectify some of PDF's problems (e.g. it works
>inside Netscape, it anti-aliases fonts and graphics for easy on-screen
>reading, it will eventually be able to do progressive display of PDF
>documents and retrieve individual pages, it already supports URLs).
>>let's face it folks, it is *not* the solution.
>Not currently, but Adobe is working on it (OK, Amber is still in alpha,
>but it works pretty well already). And Adobe is not a bunch of morons.
Photoshop, good. Pagemill? Nuff said.
>>I'm a graphic designer, and my medium is the World
>>Wide Web. Live with it, there's more of us than there are of you.
>Who is "us" and who is "you" in this sentence?
I think in this case 'us' means the creatives trying to put together
nice looking sites and the perhaps mythical 'you' being those who
still think windows 95 is a new idea, unix is user freindly and
computer languages contain lots of hyroglyphics just to make them
powerfull.
Welcome to the age old battle of the designers vs techies. I wouldnt
mind but I'm stuck firmly in the middle.
>Calling yourself a graphic designer is rather specialized, no?
No. That's what he does isnt it?
Allan Mikkelsen
>In article <317A99...@negia.net>, Jeff Walker <je...@negia.net> wrote:
>>Everywhere I look I see postings from people wanting to know how to
>>manipulate HTML into some sort of page layout language, and impatient
>>or insulting responses from HTML purists telling them to forget it.
>>That they need to trust the browser, let the browser decide how the
>>page will look. Content, not presentation, they admonish.
>Yes its possible to controll the page that will be acceptable to HTML purists
>and designers... Its called browser detect and serving the document according
>to the browser's particularities... If its Netscape, you can dish out mozilla
>extensions. If its AOL or Samba, just dish out HTML 2.0 compliant pages..
I often use Netscape to browse the web. When you detect this, how do
you also detect whether I have image loading turned on or off, what
size window I am currently using, and what colour system I am using?
All of these will have a dramatic effect on how your "designed" page
will appear om MY browser.
>>To a graphic designer, this is like hearing they have to send their
>>jobs to a printer and let the printer decide what fonts to use, what
>>colors, where elements are placed.
If the printer only owns monochrome printing equipment, it is a waste
of both yours and his time to send him incredibly coloured material.
>Well said..
>There are things that will give you a controlled look... invisible gifs,
>tables, and manipulation of width/height attributes..
They might give you a controlled look. They won't give me a
controlled look unless you can also control my browser choice and
configuration.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Allan Mikkelsen amik...@melbpc.org.au
Melbourne PC User Group
DocOzone
(Jerry Kindall) wrote:
: In article <drozone-2104...@drozone.winternet.com>,
: dro...@winternet.com (DocOzone) wrote:
: >------------------------------------------------------------
: >Thaddeus "Doc" Ozone <http://www.winternet.com/~drozone/>
: > "Specialization is for insects."
:
: Calling yourself a graphic designer is rather specialized, no?
Attack my .sig, will you? (smack upside the head with a wet fish).
Unlike you (meaning "you" personally) I have acquired the ability
to do more than one thing! Hence, unspecialized. The use of a title
does not imply knowledge of only one thing. (except, apparently,
in "c.i.w.a.h") Sheesh.
-doc-
Jerry Kindall
dro...@winternet.com (DocOzone) wrote:
>In article <kindall-2204...@ppp.manual.com>, kin...@manual.com
>(Jerry Kindall) wrote:
>
>: >------------------------------------------------------------
>: >Thaddeus "Doc" Ozone <http://www.winternet.com/~drozone/>
>: > "Specialization is for insects."
>:
>: Calling yourself a graphic designer is rather specialized, no?
>
>Attack my .sig, will you? (smack upside the head with a wet fish).
>Unlike you (meaning "you" personally) I have acquired the ability
>to do more than one thing! Hence, unspecialized. The use of a title
>does not imply knowledge of only one thing. (except, apparently,
>in "c.i.w.a.h") Sheesh.
It was intended to be a somewhat humorous remark to lighten the tone the
rest of my message was starting to take. (Judging by the wet fish retort
it seems you did get it.) Actually, while my skills are probably as not
as diverse as yours, I do have more than one; I've written over a dozen
user manuals, co-produced half a dozen instructional videos, designed a
few web sites, written some music, dabbled in graphic design and 3D
animation, written commercially-used software under three different
operating systems including Unix, and so on. I also have experience in
the marketing realm. Because of the various things I do, I am sometimes
at a loss about what to call myself. "Professional computer geek" seems
to about cover it.
BTW, just so you don't think I have something personal against you, I've
visited your pages and I do like your design quite a bit. I respect the
work of yours I've seen, and I don't even necessarily disagree with you
100%; although the HTML "purist" stance is philosophically appealing to
me, I found myself using lots of Netscape extensions in my latest job,
because the client wanted something "nice-looking" and it was easier and
more practical to give him the results he wanted than to educate him on
why doing so would be bad HTML.
I do think that we need to keep pushing toward the ideal, though, rather
than accepting the ongoing bastardizion of HTML just because it gets the
job done better than anything else at the moment. We should get Adobe to
make PDF viewers less of a hog and get Netscape to support HTML 3
(including the FIG tag, style sheets, and a proper TABLE implementation).
This will give designers more control than they have now without weakening
the HTML design philosophy.
I still contend that PDF is already better than HTML if you know how to
use it and if you need *true* WYSIWYG -- and that it will get even
better. (Adobe has shown they don't have their collective heads up their
corporate ass with their recent announcement of PageMill 2.0, which to me
sounds like it addresses all the concerns people have had about the kind
of HTML 1.0 generates. Remember, 1.0 was bought from another company.)
> -doc-
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>Thaddeus "Doc" Ozone <http://www.winternet.com/~drozone/>
> "Specialization is for insects."
--
Jerry Kindall (kin...@manual.com)
Manual Labor: We Wrote The Book!
http://www.manual.com/home/
PALINDROME #15 IN A SERIES: Collect 'em all!
Sore was I ere I saw Eros.
Stan Friesen
|>
|> >Which is why there are things like PDF.
|>
|> PDF is not HTML, it is not the same philosophy. Would I even
|> contemplate doing movie pages in PDF?
Because it does page layout, HTML doesn't.
Don't use a screwdriver to do a hammer's job, use a hammer.
If you want page layout, use a page layout language.
If you want to present information in a way that anybody can access, on
any computer in existance, with any output device imaginable, then use HTML.
--
s...@elsegundoca.attgis.com sar...@netcom.com
The peace of God be with you.
James V. Reagan
>
> In article <4lehct$m...@newsgate.dircon.co.uk>, ste...@foresight.co.uk (Stewart Dean) writes:
> |>
> |> >Which is why there are things like PDF.
> |>
> |> Let's get on thing straight. People want to layout pages on HTML.
> |> PDF is not HTML, it is not the same philosophy. Would I even
> |> contemplate doing movie pages in PDF?
>
> Because it does page layout, HTML doesn't.
>
> Don't use a screwdriver to do a hammer's job, use a hammer.
>
> If you want page layout, use a page layout language.
>
If you already know: the target platform, viewer, and viewer config,
why would PDF be any better than HTML? You can certainly use HTML to
do everything PDF can if you are putting restrictions on the clients
viewing environment.
> If you want to present information in a way that anybody can access, on
> any computer in existance, with any output device imaginable, then use HTML.
>
--
// James V. Reagan
// http://jreagan.pd.mcs.net
// mailto:jre...@mcs.net
Stewart Dean
>In article <4lehct$m...@newsgate.dircon.co.uk>, ste...@foresight.co.uk (Stewart Dean) writes:
>|>
>|> >Which is why there are things like PDF.
>|>
>|> Let's get on thing straight. People want to layout pages on HTML.
>|> PDF is not HTML, it is not the same philosophy. Would I even
>|> contemplate doing movie pages in PDF?
>Because it does page layout, HTML doesn't.
>If you want page layout, use a page layout language.
>If you want to present information in a way that anybody can access, on
>any computer in existance, with any output device imaginable, then use HTML.
HTML is device independent, but this does not mean you cannot use HTML
to layout on certain browsers. One does not exclude the other.
I design with Lynx and netscape in mind, that covers the vast majority
of my audience.
My audience does not want PDF files. My target audience is the
majority of web surfers.
HTML can be currently used to do mildly complex page layout which
degrades to a text level. It won't be long before more complex pages
can be delivered.
Let me get one thing off my chest. HTML stands for Hypertext Markup
Language. HTML now includes support for pictures as standard so
really it would be better described as Web Markup Language. If the
browsers can handle it there should be no bounds on what it is
possible to mark up.
After all it wasnt long ago print jobs were sent to print as a list of
instructions, the markup concept HTML is based upon.
>--
>s...@elsegundoca.attgis.com sar...@netcom.com
>The peace of God be with you.
P.S. Religious views have no part in this newsgroup. Some find this
sig out of place.
Mr. Eyesore
> DocOzone> In article <kindall-2104...@ppp.manual.com>,
>
> DocOzone> *not* the solution. I'm a graphic designer, and my medium is the
> World Wide Web. Live with it, there's more of us than there are of you.
What you fail to see is that 'your medium' *is* dominated and/or controlled
by the computer nerds, programmers, comp/sci professionals, admins, and
others out there. They are the ones creating and implementing the lovely
technology which everyone is using. They spend many a hour discussing,
thinking, testing, theorizing, and debating as to how information can be used,
how information can be dispersed, and how information can be made to be
the most universal and device independent. To throw all that away in the
name of visual aesthetics is foolish if not naive.
Take the time to learn about the medium and learn it well. It just makes
you that much more of a well-informed and well-rounded person. Jumping
in and saying "We're here now and if you don't like it, tough shit!!" doesn't
solve a *damn* thing [ie. "..more of us.."]. It just makes you look like the
village idiot.
Mr. Eyesore
The Exclusive Zone
DocOzone
Eyesore) wrote:
: > DocOzone> In article <kindall-2104...@ppp.manual.com>,
(we were discussing PDF format, which I feel is...)
: > DocOzone> *not* the solution. I'm a graphic designer, and my medium
is the
: > World Wide Web. Live with it, there's more of us than
there are of you.
:
: Take the time to learn about the medium and learn it well. It just makes
: you that much more of a well-informed and well-rounded person. Jumping
: in and saying "We're here now and if you don't like it, tough shit!!" doesn't
: solve a *damn* thing [ie. "..more of us.."]. It just makes you look like the
: village idiot.
Ah, I love this group! Nowhere else do I receive less useful information,
and more name calling. Really, sometimes I think the only reason I monitor
this group is to rescue some of the newer folks from the steaming hot
flames. I include my URL in each and every post, rip on that if you'd
like. I judge people by what they can *do*. What can you do, Mr. Eyesore?
Judging by your name, (since you don't have an URL), you seem to
specialize in profanity. Jolly good. Thanks for sharing.
Your pal, -doc-
Ian Burrell
>Stan Friesen wrote:
>
>If you already know: the target platform, viewer, and viewer config,
>why would PDF be any better than HTML? You can certainly use HTML to
>do everything PDF can if you are putting restrictions on the clients
>viewing environment.
>
You can't do everything any page description language should do. I
don't know what all PDF can do, but I do knwo what HTML can't do.
Also, this applies to HTML without stylesheets; stylesheets allows
alot of designing, but not to the level of graphic design programs.
Can HTML put text in arbitary colors, sizes, or fonts? No.
Can HTML indent text, set paragraph margins? No.
Can HTML specify line spacing? No.
Can HTML place any element at a specific place on the page? No.
Can HTML specify the size of the page? No.
Can HTML do different styles of lists? No.
Can HTML insert arbitary whitespace anywhere in the page?
All of these can be done with a page description language, most with a
typesetting language like TeX, and most with HTML combined with
stylesheets, but not in plain HTML. There isn't any way to specify
the placement or sizing to an grid, a basic component of any layout
language.
- Ian
--
-- Ian Burrell == ibur...@leland.stanford.edu **
<URL:http://www-leland.stanford.edu/~iburrell/>
You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely.
Stan Friesen
|> Stan Friesen wrote:
|> > Because it does page layout, HTML doesn't.
|> >
|> >
|> >
|>
|> why would PDF be any better than HTML?
More detailed control.
Of course in that situation you are not publishing to the World Wide Web,
you are publishing to the Company Wide Web.
|> You can certainly use HTML to
|> do everything PDF can if you are putting restrictions on the clients
|> viewing environment.
And if you use browser-pecific non-HTML extensions to the language.
Proper, un-extended HTML does NOT provide the level of control that PDF
does, even on a specified, known platform.
Piercarlo Grandi
>>> On Sun, 21 Apr 1996 15:23:24 -0500, Jeff Walker <je...@negia.net> said:
jeffx> Everywhere I look I see postings from people wanting to know how to
jeffx> manipulate HTML into some sort of page layout language, and impatient
jeffx> or insulting responses from HTML purists telling them to forget it.
jeffx> That they need to trust the browser, let the browser decide how the
jeffx> page will look.
This starts looking like a biased summary: for the line is not "trust
the browser", but it is precisely the opposite: "you cannot trust the
browser to do what you want", because firs tof all you don't know which
browser, and even if one did, one would know which platform it was
running on.
jeffx> Content, not presentation, they admonish.
Again, this seems a biased summary: for we all like cute, informative,
entertaining presentation to enhance content. Unfortunately, whether we
like or not, _visual_ presentation control is *impossible* thru the
Web. Therefore presentation must be done via other, non graphical
techniques, for example structural design of the content. The same
content can be presented in a million different structures, and *that*
you can reliably control across the Web.
jeffx> To a graphic designer, this is like hearing they have to send
jeffx> their jobs to a printer and let the printer decide what fonts to
jeffx> use, what colors, where elements are placed.
Indeed, for on the Web the graphicas designer does not know to which
printer the document goes, which sort of printing process is used, which
sort of colors are available, which fonts, which sizes, and not even
what is the page size, therefore a-priori graphical layout cannot be
done.
How can you place elements when you don't know what size is the page,
and *what shape* is the page?
jeffx> "Logical" is appealing from a theoretical standpoint, but in the
jeffx> real world folks want "physical" results. Especially with more
jeffx> graphic designers coming on board. They want more control over
jeffx> how their pages will look, and who can blame them?
Indeed, nobody can blame them -- unfortunately they are going to be very
frustrated because more control is *impossible*. Do you get this?
*Impossible*. Not undesirable, or illegal, or fattening, or whatever. We
all would go for more control over presentation if it were
_possible_. The reason for which HTML is not a PDL is that a PDL over
the Web is _futile_, not because purists love to hate graphics
designers. Indeed purists warmly recommend style sheets, which are the
only possible way to get _good quality_ visual presentation on the Web.
When myself and others recommend "switch to PDF" we do so with a knowing
perfidious smile: because the control that PDF gives is totally
illusory. You, as a graphics designer, would you use _exactly the same
PS file_ to print the same page for a color glossy or a b&W daily? Of
course not, becaue it would render very badly on one or the other. You
would, I hope, make two distinct versions. Well, on the Web the variety
of media is even greater...
Piercarlo Grandi
>>> On Tue, 23 Apr 1996 22:37:02 GMT, ste...@foresight.co.uk (Stewart
>>> Dean) said:
>> If you want page layout, use a page layout language.
>> If you want to present information in a way that anybody can access,
>> on any computer in existance, with any output device imaginable, then
>> use HTML.
stewart> HTML is device independent, but this does not mean you cannot
stewart> use HTML to layout on certain browsers. One does not exclude
stewart> the other.
Unfortunately it does: because the issue is not the browser, it is the
output device. You simply cannot do layout that will look good across
the immense variety of output devices used on the Web, using any PDL,
and even less so in HTML. Even if the only browser in existence were
Netscape version 2.01, for example, you still could not control layout,
because browser type is in effect a rather secondary issue.
If you layout for some particular version of Netscape or Lynx, and then
put the infamous button "these pages are best seen with Netscape X.Y
[click here to download]" or "with Lynx X.Y [click here to donwload]", you
are deluding yourself: what you should write is "these pages best
vieweed on a 17in screen [click here to download] with a truecolor card
capable of 1024x768 [click here to download] and with Minion fonts
[click here to download]".
stewart> I design with Lynx and netscape in mind, that covers the vast
stewart> majority of my audience.
First, you have no evidence of this; second, even granting this for the
sake of argument, you have absolutely no idea as that kind of *monitors*
and *video cards* and *fonts* your audience is using, so you still
cannot do any sort of decent graphics design even in a language that
allowed it.
Piercarlo Grandi
>>> On Sun, 21 Apr 1996 18:55:04 -0500, dro...@winternet.com (DocOzone)
>>> said:
drozone> I'm a graphic designer, and my medium is the World Wide Web.
The two things cannot be true together, and actually in this case it is
fairly obvious neither is true: you cannot possibly be a graphic
designer, and the reason is precisely is that a graphics designer would
know that the WWW is not a graphical medium.
Under the assumption that your statement that you are a graphic designer
is not knowingly false, but merely a delusion, let me explain why
neither of your assertions above (those connected by "and") is true.
A graphic designer cares very much about the graphical delivery device:
for a graphic designer knows that a good (or even a bad :->) visual
presentation depends critically on the capabilities of the output
device. The presentation style that is suitable for B&W tabloids is not
at all suitable for glossy art books, and what looks good on TV looks
garish on film.
Now, the WWW is not an output device: it is a transmission device.
Amazing but true!
When a graphic designer sends a disk cartridge to a bureau, he has
designed the presentation for the bureau's press, which is the intended
medium: no graphic designer I can imagine would call the _disk
cartridge_ the medium. Indeed you could have written "I'm a graphic
designer, and my medium is the telephone" and it would have made as much
sense.
Indeed, the WWW is just a transmissive medium, and as such it cannot be
the medium of any graphic designer, because it is not a graphical medium.
The output devices attached to the WWW are graphical media, but given
that it is impossible to know in advance what are the characteristics of
any/most such devices, down to whether they are graphical at all, the
graphical medium is indeterminate, and thus graphics design across the
WWW is in fact impossible, whether one likes it or not.
Real graphic designers can get mad and cancel a print run and force
printers to redo it if the type of paper requested has been
substituted with another, because even the _texture_ of the paper
greatly influences a graphic design...
Therefore it is impossible to be both a graphic designer and have as
medium the WWW, because, summarizing:
* the WWW is not even a graphical medium, but a transmission one;
* a graphic designer at the very least knows what is and what is not a
graphical medium.
* the type of graphical media reachable via the WWW is to all purposes
unknowable;
* graphics designers badly want to know what sort of medium will
display their preciously specified artwork because graphics design is
pretty much impossible without knowing as much.
I think that is pretty clear -- is more explanation needed, for example
on why style sheets, as no PDL, or PDL-like extension to HTMl could, do
make graphical design _possible_ across the WWW, to some extent?
Charles Peyton Taylor
dro...@winternet.com (DocOzone) wrote:
>In article <4lkse9$j...@tlaltec.tezcat.com>, fac...@tezcat.com (Mr.
>Eyesore) wrote:
>: > DocOzone> In article <kindall-2104...@ppp.manual.com>,
> (we were discussing PDF format, which I feel is...)
>: > DocOzone> *not* the solution. I'm a graphic designer, and my medium
>is the
>: > World Wide Web. Live with it, there's more of us than
>there are of you.
>:
>: Take the time to learn about the medium and learn it well. It just makes
>: you that much more of a well-informed and well-rounded person. Jumping
>: in and saying "We're here now and if you don't like it, tough shit!!" doesn't
>: solve a *damn* thing [ie. "..more of us.."]. It just makes you look like the
>: village idiot.
Which I agree with.
Then "Doc Ozone" tries to take the high road:
>Ah, I love this group! Nowhere else do I receive less useful information,
>and more name calling.
Are you american? Have you been watching the election debates?
>Really, sometimes I think the only reason I monitor
>this group is to rescue some of the newer folks from the steaming hot
>flames.
No, "there's more of us than there are of you" is not
rescueing some poor clueless newbie. Don't expect to just
barge in an tell everyone how it is. The problem is not
"you don't understand graphic designers"; the problem is
*you* don't understand the basics of information transfer
as applied to the web.
>I include my URL in each and every post, rip on that if you'd
>like.
SINCE YOU ASKED: first thought was "ewwww... frames". This
is usually the sign of someone who making up for bad design
or lack of information. Actually, your graphics look good
on a 256-color display, but the backgrounds don't tile well
and they literally look like vomit on a 16-color display
(all that yellow and beige). Furthermore, you don't make
use of alt tags, except on that "make your visit count,
load this image" thing. BTW, that "Those Annoying Post
Bros. two very dangerous bad-boys.." thing really made me
laugh.
All together, I think your work is best suited for cheezy
metal-band CD covers. (Sorry if this offends any Metal-heads.)
>I judge people by what they can *do*. What can you do, Mr. Eyesore?
>Judging by your name, (since you don't have an URL), you seem to
>specialize in profanity.
Judging by his name, I'd say he was into 4AD. I'm not
even going to bother to explain.
>Jolly good. Thanks for sharing.
> Your pal, -doc-
>------------------------------------------------------------
>Thaddeus "Doc" Ozone <http://www.winternet.com/~drozone/>
> "Specialization is for insects."
C h a r l e s P e y t o n T a y l o r cta...@nps.navy.mil
The opinions and views expressed ## even though we're on our own,
are my own and do not reflect ## we are never all alone,
Those of the Naval PostGraduate School ## when we are singing, singing.
http://vislab-www.nps.navy.mil/%7ectaylor/
Lee Gregory
Jeff Walker <je...@negia.net> wrote:
>Everywhere I look I see postings from people wanting to know how to
>manipulate HTML into some sort of page layout language, and impatient
>or insulting responses from HTML purists telling them to forget it.
>That they need to trust the browser, let the browser decide how the
>page will look. Content, not presentation, they admonish.
>To a graphic designer, this is like hearing they have to send their
>jobs to a printer and let the printer decide what fonts to use, what
>colors, where elements are placed.
>"Logical" is appealing from a theoretical standpoint, but in the real
>world folks want "physical" results. Especially with more graphic
>designers coming on board. They want more control over how their
>pages will look, and who can blame them?
>--
>Jeff Walker + jeffx + graphics + websites + athens
>je...@negia.net
>http://www.negia.net/~jeffx/jeffx.html
You have to remember that html is not DTP. Unless style sheets are implemented,
there will never be a guarantee that everyone is seeing what you want them to
see, unless of course everyone starts using the same browser on the same system
at the same resolution, with all the default browser settings intact. I wonder
how likely that is....
Even with style sheets, I'm not sure you'd have complete uniformity across all
platforms. (Someone correct me if I'm wrong.)
However, there is an alternative, one which I'm beginning to explore seriously.
Portable documents. They load fast as heck, and look great. The user has
control over magnification, but fonts and graphics are controlled 100% by the
page designer. All of us who are wanting more control might want to check out
the .pdf possibilities.
And BTW, no, I don't own stock in Adobe.
************************************
Lee Gregory - ASLAN WEB DESIGN
gre...@aa.net
http://www.aa.net/~gregfam/aslan.htm
Member - HTML WRITERS GUILD
************************************
Mike Batchelor
>kin...@manual.com (Jerry Kindall) wrote:
>>In article <drozone-2104...@drozone.winternet.com>,
>>dro...@winternet.com (DocOzone) wrote:
>>>Let's face it, PDF sucks, IMO. I'm really sick of hearing folks who are
>>>obviously *not* Graphic Designers telling us all to start using it and
>>>leave the WWW alone. Do you work for Adobe or what?
>>>you need a frigging *viewer* to use it
>>I suppose it would be redundant to point out that you need a frigging
>>viewer to read HTML, too. In fact, it used to be you needed a frigging
>>viewer to see QuickTime, JPEG, sounds, and other media types, until they
>>were integrated into popular browsers.
>The difference is PDF needs more hardware and software to run than
>HTML.
What does this have to do with graphic design? I see lots of pages by
graphics designers that put up gigantic GIF or JPEG images, without a
thought in the world to how laborious it might be for someone not browsing
directly on their server. And really, they shouldn't be worrying too much
about that. The technological details are not their field of expertise,
though they'd be wise to keep size in mind when designing graphics.
>I takes time to prepare and is not garanteed to be readable for
>you viewer.
But <font face="doodad" size="+4"> is??
>For specialist uses maybe - but not for general web user stuff. Too
>many plugins spoil the broth.
>"As Adobe/Apple/Netscape battle over font types with Microsoft,
>Bitstream will remain neutral and deliver a solution that supports
>everyone," said Ray Boelig, president and CEO of Bitstream. "Our goal
>is to offer the industry the guarantee that their documents will
>appear as they were originally intended."
This will work really well on Lynx, I;m sure, or on current Netscape
versions. Besides, what is the difference between upgrading to a browser
that support Bitstream webfonts, and upgrading to a browser that supports
PDF inline?
>>>I'm a graphic designer, and my medium is the World
>>>Wide Web. Live with it, there's more of us than there are of you.
>>Who is "us" and who is "you" in this sentence?
>I think in this case 'us' means the creatives trying to put together
>nice looking sites and the perhaps mythical 'you' being those who
>still think windows 95 is a new idea, unix is user freindly and
>computer languages contain lots of hyroglyphics just to make them
>powerfull.
>Welcome to the age old battle of the designers vs techies. I wouldnt
>mind but I'm stuck firmly in the middle.
It has nothing to do with designers vs. techies. It's a hammer vs.
screwdriver issue.
--
+ + + %%%%% Mike Batchelor % mik...@Capitol.Net %%%%% A Division
Capitol.Net %%%%%%%%%%% 301-306-9090 % V.34/ISDN %%%%%%%%%%% of
+ + + %% Serving Washington DC, No.VA, and Maryland %% Criticom, Inc.
Mike Batchelor
In <drozone-2104...@drozone.winternet.com> dro...@winternet.com (DocOzone) writes:
>In article <kindall-2104...@ppp.manual.com>, kin...@manual.com
>(Jerry Kindall) wrote:
>: In article <317A99...@negia.net>, Jeff Walker <je...@negia.net> wrote:
>:
>: >They want more control over how their
>: >pages will look, and who can blame them?
>:
>: Which is why there are things like PDF.
>:
>Let's face it, PDF sucks, IMO. I'm really sick of hearing folks who are
>obviously *not* Graphic Designers telling us all to start using it and
>leave the WWW alone. Do you work for Adobe or what? The file sizes are too
>big, you need a frigging *viewer* to use it, let's face it folks, it is
>*not* the solution. I'm a graphic designer, and my medium is the World
>Wide Web. Live with it, there's more of us than there are of you.
> -DocOzone-
Well I'm a graphic designer and my medium is telnet. Telnet really needs to
be upgraded, but all this WWW stuff has taken its thunder away, and no one
pays any attention to it anymore. All the hacks I've done with curses and
VT emulations seems like it will come to nothing in the end. It's too bad,
because telnet is a really poweful visual medium, if you know all the
tricks, and have the sensibilities of a graphics designer, like me.
The best thing about telnet, though, is that it is backwards compatible with
the WWW. You can access documents for the web, for gopher, for ftp, all
using just telnet. It's way more versatile.
(HINT: this post is heavy with sarcasm)
(HINT #2: use the right tool for the job - HTML is not a graphic medium)
(HINT #3: the kind of control over layout you people seek will never be
delivered in a lightweight language. PDF is nearly as good as it gets)
Tero Paananen
>Thaddeus "Doc" Ozone <http://www.winternet.com/~drozone/>
OZONE
[LINK] OZONE \'o--.zo-n\ \o--'zo--nik, -'za:n-ik\
\.o--(.)zo--'nif-(*-)r*s\ \'o--.zo--n*s, o--'\ n
[G ozon, fr. Gk ozo-n, prp. of ozein to smell - more at]ODOR 1: an
allotropic triatomic form of oxygen that is normally a faintly blue
irritating gas with a characteristic pungent odor, is generated usu.
in dilute form by a silent electric discharge in ordinary oxygen or
air, and is used esp. in disinfection and deodorization and in
oxidation and bleaching 2: pure and refreshing air - ozo.nic aj
[LINK] [LINK] [LINK] [LINK] [LINK]
[LINK]
[LINK]
[LINK]
Make your visit count, load this image. [COUNTER]
Yeps, looks exactly like a page authored by a graphic designer...but
of course since I'm not using the same browser, the same platform, the
same monitor with the same resolution and number of colours, who am I
to judge.
-TPP
Mr. Eyesore
In article <drozone-2404...@drozone.winternet.com>, dro...@winternet.com (DocOzone) wrote:
>In article <4lkse9$j...@tlaltec.tezcat.com>, fac...@tezcat.com (Mr.
>Eyesore) wrote:
>
>: > DocOzone> In article <kindall-2104...@ppp.manual.com>,
> (we were discussing PDF format, which I feel is...)
>is the
>: > World Wide Web. Live with it, there's more of us than
>there are of you.
>: Take the time to learn about the medium and learn it well. It just makes
>: you that much more of a well-informed and well-rounded person. Jumping
>: in and saying "We're here now and if you don't like it, tough shit!!" doesn't
> :solve a *damn* thing [ie. "..more of us.."]. It just makes you look like the
>: village idiot.
>
>this group is to rescue some of the newer folks from the steaming hot
>like. I judge people by what they can *do*. What can you do, Mr. Eyesore?
>Judging by your name, (since you don't have an URL), you seem to
Profanity? Whatever. For your sake, I'll share. This is what you're pages
look like under Lynx. Please enlighten me as to how one would navigate
through them..
Part I
> [LINK] OZONE \'o--.zo-n\ \o--'zo--nik, -'za:n-ik\
> \.o--(.)zo--'nif-(*-)r*s\ \'o--.zo--n*s, o--'\ n
> [G ozon, fr. Gk ozo-n, prp. of ozein to smell - more at]ODOR 1: an
> allotropic triatomic form of oxygen that is normally a faintly blue
> irritating gas with a characteristic pungent odor, is generated usu.
> in dilute form by a silent electric discharge in ordinary oxygen or
> air, and is used esp. in disinfection and deodorization and in
> oxidation and bleaching 2: pure and refreshing air - ozo.nic aj
>
> [LINK] [LINK] [LINK] [LINK] [LINK]
>
> [LINK]
> [LINK]
> [LINK]
>
> Make your visit count, load this image. [COUNTER]
Part II
>
> [LINK] [LINK] [LINK] [LINK] [LINK] [LINK] [LINK] [LINK] [LINK]
>
>
>
[snipped for brevity]
>
>
>
> [LINK]
> [LINK]
> [LINK]
>
> Make your visit count, load this image. [COUNTER]
Part III
> [LINK] [LINK] [LINK] [LINK] [LINK] [LINK] [LINK] [LINK] [LINK]
> [LINK] [LINK] [LINK]
> [LINK]
>
> [LINK] ________________________________________ Search
>
>[LINK] ________________________________________ Search
>
> Search Yahoo: ________________________________________ Search
>
> Search Lycos: ________________________________________ Search
I could go on, but (I hope) you get the point. This is precisely what I
was trying to say in the original reply. If this is 'your medium', you've
a bit to learn.
You might try to use ALT tags.
Mr. Eyesore
Stan Friesen
In article <4lptqg$t...@Holly.aa.net>, gre...@aa.net (Lee Gregory ) writes:
|>
|> Even with style sheets, I'm not sure you'd have complete uniformity across all
|> platforms. (Someone correct me if I'm wrong.)
OK, I will :-)
Even with style sheets I am certain that there will *not* be uniformity
across platforms.
A. Style sheets are merely advisory.
B. Documents may have more thanone style sheet.
C. User's are allowed to specify overrides for style sheet directives (at
least in CSS).
D. All of the arguments regarding the impossibility of uniform rendering across
the wide array of output devices used on the Web still apply.
DocOzone
In article <yf3wx33...@sabi.demon.co.uk>, pier...@sabi.demon.co.uk
(Piercarlo Grandi) wrote:
: >>> On Sun, 21 Apr 1996 18:55:04 -0500, dro...@winternet.com (DocOzone)
: >>> said:
:
: drozone> I'm a graphic designer, and my medium is the World Wide Web.
:
: The two things cannot be true together, and actually in this case it is
: fairly obvious neither is true: you cannot possibly be a graphic
: designer, and the reason is precisely is that a graphics designer would
: know that the WWW is not a graphical medium.
:
: I think that is pretty clear -- is more explanation needed, for example
: on why style sheets, as no PDL, or PDL-like extension to HTMl could, do
: make graphical design _possible_ across the WWW, to some extent?
Well, I *am* a Graphic Designer, perhaps I should rephrase myself.
: drozone> I'm a graphic designer, and my preferred method of image
transmission is the part of the internet generally reffered to as the
"World Wide Web".
Personally I think the first statement made a better catchphrase, and I'm
willing to bet that most folks understood what I was saying. <g> Lighten
up.
Your pal, -doc-
BTW, Please, no more explanations! Here's the facts, I make computer
generated art, and due to the WWW thousands of folks who would never have
seen my work now have seen and enjoyed it. (At least, so I assume by all
the nice mail I get, as well as my high hit count.)
------------------------------------------------------------
Thaddeus "Doc" Ozone <http://www.winternet.com/~drozone/>
"Specialization is for insects."
Stewart Dean
mik...@Capitol.Net (Mike Batchelor) wrote:
>In <4lgvo8$r...@newsgate.dircon.co.uk> ste...@foresight.co.uk (Stewart Dean) writes:
>>The difference is PDF needs more hardware and software to run than
>>HTML.
>What does this have to do with graphic design? I see lots of pages by
>graphics designers that put up gigantic GIF or JPEG images, without a
>thought in the world to how laborious it might be for someone not browsing
>directly on their server. And really, they shouldn't be worrying too much
>about that. The technological details are not their field of expertise,
>though they'd be wise to keep size in mind when designing graphics.
I know what you mean by gigantic Gif and Jpegs and you're right that
it isnt very web freindly.
>>I takes time to prepare and is not garanteed to be readable for
>>you viewer.
>But <font face="doodad" size="+4"> is??
No. That's how *not* to do fonts on the internet. The solution has
not arrived yet - that's why I pointed out the forthcoming solutions.
Anyway in this case the face tag can be egnored and you still retain
the content.
The key is in degradability.
>>For specialist uses maybe - but not for general web user stuff. Too
>>many plugins spoil the broth.
>>"As Adobe/Apple/Netscape battle over font types with Microsoft,
>>Bitstream will remain neutral and deliver a solution that supports
>>everyone," said Ray Boelig, president and CEO of Bitstream. "Our goal
>>is to offer the industry the guarantee that their documents will
>>appear as they were originally intended."
>This will work really well on Lynx, I;m sure, or on current Netscape
>versions. Besides, what is the difference between upgrading to a browser
>that support Bitstream webfonts, and upgrading to a browser that supports
>PDF inline?
PDF is all or nothing. A page with font additions to it will still be
readable in LYNX just as it is today. If half the web went over to
PDF then the majority of the internet would disappear to the vast
majority of users. Think about what you said.
>>Welcome to the age old battle of the designers vs techies. I wouldnt
>>mind but I'm stuck firmly in the middle.
>It has nothing to do with designers vs. techies. It's a hammer vs.
>screwdriver issue.
PDF is not HTML, they are different media and do different jobs, that
is clear. To say HTML *is not* a page layout language is like saying
Purple Haze is not music because there is no conductor or sheet music
involved.
I kind of see PDF as Fax and HTML as email.
HTML is and will be whatever we want it to be.
Stewart Dean
ibur...@leland.Stanford.EDU (Ian Burrell) wrote:
>You can't do everything any page description language should do. I
>don't know what all PDF can do, but I do knwo what HTML can't do.
>Also, this applies to HTML without stylesheets; stylesheets allows
>alot of designing, but not to the level of graphic design programs.
Okay, let me first state the answers I give here apply to Netscape 2
and Microsoft browser 2. I consider these 'browser tags' to be part of
HTML more so than proposed tags. So onto the reply.
>Can HTML put text in arbitary colors, sizes, or fonts? No.
Colour? Yep <tedt color="#ff00ff">
Size? Yep <h1></h1> or <text size=+3> these are relative.
Fonts? Sort of. Microsoft has a foolish font tag (<text
font="symbol">. Font's that download with the page are on the way.
>Can HTML indent text, set paragraph margins? No.
Indent yep. <ul> can be used for that. Paragraph margins can be sort
of done with <blockquote> although this is not advised.
>Can HTML specify line spacing? No.
Not that I know of.
>Can HTML place any element at a specific place on the page? No.
If you know HTML you can. There are several ways to do this. Tables,
spacer tags, frames etc..
>Can HTML specify the size of the page? No.
Sort of again, Frame support allows a certain amount of this.
>Can HTML do different styles of lists? No.
Style sheets are somthing missing. I see them mainly usefull for
page creation.
>Can HTML insert arbitary whitespace anywhere in the page?
Yes. Either using spacer tags, <pre> or the escape character for
space (can't remeber what it is off the top of my head.
>All of these can be done with a page description language, most with a
>typesetting language like TeX, and most with HTML combined with
>stylesheets, but not in plain HTML. There isn't any way to specify
>the placement or sizing to an grid, a basic component of any layout
>language.
In our choatic times there is no such thing as plain HTML. Standard
HTML yes, the standard I consider difined by the majority - anything
else should be considered as guidlines, specialist tags or proposals.
I suggest you learn modern HTML before claiming to know what if can
and can't do.
Piercarlo Grandi
>>> On Sat, 27 Apr 1996 02:31:39 -0500, dro...@winternet.com (DocOzone)
>>> said:
drozone> I'm a graphic designer, and my preferred method of image
drozone> transmission is the part of the internet generally reffered to
drozone> as the "World Wide Web".
Ah, but this is a completely different thing from what you said before!
Unfortunately now we understand that you have been speaking off-topic:
for this newsgroup is devoted to discussing HTML authoring, not the
authoring or distribution of images across the Web, even if HTML
documents can refer to pictures as easily as they can refer to other
HTML documents, or ZIP archives, or sound files, or whatever.
drozone> Personally I think the first statement made a better catchphrase,
Well, perhaps :-)
drozone> and I'm willing to bet that most folks understood what I was
drozone> saying.
Well, my impression is that a big problem with graphics designers is
that many/most of them here seem to believe what you wrote originally
quite literally themselves: that the Web *is* some sort of graphical
output device that could be driven by some sort of graphical command
set, if only those darn reactionaries would let such a command set be
added to HTML.
drozone> <g> Lighten up. Your pal, -doc-
Will try -- but I am slightly overweight :-).
drozone> BTW, Please, no more explanations! Here's the facts, I make
drozone> computer generated art, and due to the WWW thousands of folks
drozone> who would never have seen my work now have seen and enjoyed
drozone> it. (At least, so I assume by all the nice mail I get, as well
drozone> as my high hit count.)
Ah, but this is an entirely different issue from HTML authoring: it is
actually a far more difficult issue, for a number of reasons.
One big problem is that many graphics designers are used to having as
final output medium some high quality, and tightly controlled, output
device, usually some sort of paper based color process; as a result they
tend to require graphical systems that come as close as possible to
that, e.g. truecolor, high dpi, color matching systems, and whatnot, for
the sake of WYSIWYG design.
Still the typical graphic designer rapidly realizes that what they see
on screen is often rather unlike what they get from the printer; such
experience is so common, and frustration so high, that it should make
them wary of expecting *graphical control of output over the Web* of
all things. Still many ``graphic designers'' claim that this is
desirable, as if it were possible.
Unfortunately when distributing images across the Web they will be
displayed on all sorts of thingies with visual properties often very
different from those of paper or the sort of system that usually graphic
designers tend to like.
There are huge problems in devising graphic designs whose effect and
aesthetics can survive mutilation by random output devices (and again,
such issues are totally different from those of authoring HTML). Perhaps
the appreciation of your work comes from your ability to deal with such
issues successfully, more or less consciously.
As to me, if I were a graphic designer I would be daunted by the task of
making designs that look good across even a small spectrum of output
devices. For example, just the problem that most image formats are
bitmapped and *don't scale* would depress me.
I like to sprinkle HTML documents with some icons/pictures here and
there, because that can well help to follow the content/structure of the
document (after all even books have illustrations), and being unable to
be sure that these will actually add value by being if anything
readable... You have all my simpathy.
Ian Burrell
In article <4lt8am$s...@newsgate.dircon.co.uk>,
Stewart Dean <ste...@foresight.co.uk> wrote:
>
>Okay, let me first state the answers I give here apply to Netscape 2
>and Microsoft browser 2. I consider these 'browser tags' to be part of
>HTML more so than proposed tags. So onto the reply.
>
There is nothing in the HTML standard that requires many of the
conventions used in Netscape that people think allow page layout. In
fact, more sophisticated browsers with better layout control probably
would break most of these tricks.
>>Can HTML put text in arbitary colors, sizes, or fonts? No.
>Colour? Yep <tedt color="#ff00ff">
>Size? Yep <h1></h1> or <text size=+3> these are relative.
>Fonts? Sort of. Microsoft has a foolish font tag (<text
>font="symbol">. Font's that download with the page are on the way.
>
<h1> makes no defintion of the font size. A conforming browser just
needs to make headers prominent, which could be done with color, fonts,
or placement. And it can't be used inside paragraphs.
Relative font sizing is nice, but page design sometimes requires that
using only "times, bold, 14pt", and there isn't any way of specifying
this in HTML.
>>Can HTML indent text, set paragraph margins? No.
>Indent yep. <ul> can be used for that. Paragraph margins can be sort
>of done with <blockquote> although this is not advised.
>
<ul> makes great indents. I just love having the dot in front. If
you meant <dl> that is even worse, because you can't guarantee that
the definition will be indented or on a separate line. Besides, what
is I want my paragraph indented 2 inches or margins twice as wide as
usual. Or text divided into two columns. Can't do that either.
>>Can HTML specify line spacing? No.
>Not that I know of.
>
>>Can HTML place any element at a specific place on the page? No.
>If you know HTML you can. There are several ways to do this. Tables,
>spacer tags, frames etc..
>
How precise is this layout control? In TeX, I can tell it exactly how
much whitespace I want separating elements, in PageMaker I place
elements anywhere on the page. With tables, only relative spacing is
possible, and the layout cell size is variable and large.
>>Can HTML specify the size of the page? No.
>Sort of again, Frame support allows a certain amount of this.
>
Sort of isn't good enough in page design. Besides, frames are evil.
>>Can HTML do different styles of lists? No.
>Style sheets are somthing missing. I see them mainly usefull for
>page creation.
>
>>Can HTML insert arbitary whitespace anywhere in the page?
>Yes. Either using spacer tags, <pre> or the escape character for
>space (can't remeber what it is off the top of my head.
>
But whitespace with <pre> can only be introduced in single lines or
space characters. Spacer images are not part of HTML and are a poor
way to introduce whitespace.
>In our choatic times there is no such thing as plain HTML. Standard
>HTML yes, the standard I consider difined by the majority - anything
>else should be considered as guidlines, specialist tags or proposals.
The standard is defined by the standard body, which is the W3C and
IETF for HTML. The Netscape extensions aren't defined by a majority,
they are defined by a single player, and in many cases there isn't
good standard-type documentation on the tags. Since they are used by
many authors, this makes them popular, not standard.
Good graphics design frequently requires rigid control of elements
such as color, size, spacing, and placement, and requires knowledge of
the output device. Standard HTML gives none of this control, and
while the extensions give some more control, it isn't enough for good
page design. HTML was designed to do logical markup of structure with
presentation hints can be given in stylesheets. There is a place on
the Web for layout, for logos, toolbars, title pages, etc., but HTML
doesn't provide the control necessary, which is why is frustrates
graphic designers. HTML shouldn't be made into a poor page layout
language when there are good ones available, but there aren't any
simple, platform independent, hypertext languages except HTML.
- Ian
--
-- Ian Burrell == ibur...@leland.stanford.edu **
<URL:http://www-leland.stanford.edu/~iburrell/>
If everything is coming your way then you're in the wrong lane.
Sunil Mishra
In article <4lt8ah$s...@newsgate.dircon.co.uk> ste...@foresight.co.uk (Stewart Dean) writes:
\\ >But <font face="doodad" size="+4"> is??
\\
\\ No. That's how *not* to do fonts on the internet. The solution has
\\ not arrived yet - that's why I pointed out the forthcoming solutions.
\\ Anyway in this case the face tag can be egnored and you still retain
\\ the content.
Not always, if you use the font increase to indicate a headline then that
information will be lost on the user. If you use this kind of markup to
indicate small caps or something, then that will be lost on most robots etc
that come to index pages for search engines. That's quite a price to pay
for using <font ...>
\\ The key is in degradability.
Agreed :-)
\\ PDF is all or nothing. A page with font additions to it will still be
\\ readable in LYNX just as it is today. If half the web went over to
\\ PDF then the majority of the internet would disappear to the vast
\\ majority of users. Think about what you said.
True, which is why it can also afford to give you complete control over
presentation. The only reason HTML degrades as well as it does is that the
browser handles the rendering of the text, leaving the author with
relatively little control. This enables the display to be optimized for
whatever platform or software that is currently running.
The issue here, as I understand it, is author control. And giving the
author that much control would amount to abandoning the goal of having a
method of easily communicating information across different platforms.
\\ >>Welcome to the age old battle of the designers vs techies. I wouldnt
\\ >>mind but I'm stuck firmly in the middle.
\\
\\ >It has nothing to do with designers vs. techies. It's a hammer vs.
\\ >screwdriver issue.
\\
\\ PDF is not HTML, they are different media and do different jobs, that
\\ is clear. To say HTML *is not* a page layout language is like saying
\\ Purple Haze is not music because there is no conductor or sheet music
\\ involved.
No, saying that HTML is not page layout is like saying that the music
sheets are not music. You can use the sheets to understand what the
musician intended, and try to reproduce it to the best of your abilities,
which is a far cry from buying a CD that you can plug into your CD player
and let it do its thing.
\\ I kind of see PDF as Fax and HTML as email.
\\
\\ HTML is and will be whatever we want it to be.
I hope not.
Sunil
DocOzone
In article <yf3viil...@sabi.demon.co.uk>, pier...@sabi.demon.co.uk
(Piercarlo Grandi) wrote:
: >>> On Sat, 27 Apr 1996 02:31:39 -0500, dro...@winternet.com (DocOzone)
: >>> said:
:
: drozone> I'm a graphic designer, and my preferred method of image
: drozone> transmission is the part of the internet generally reffered to
: drozone> as the "World Wide Web".
:
: Ah, but this is a completely different thing from what you said before!
:
<snip, good comments, read the thread>
:
: One big problem is that many graphics designers are used to having as
: final output medium some high quality, and tightly controlled, output
: device, usually some sort of paper based color process;
Yeppers, I do get your point here. FWIW, I've spent the last eight years
*running* a commercial print shop. As such I'm really do understand what
many 'graphic designers' expect. I came at Graphic Design from more of a
"nuts & bolts" beginning. Unfortunately, I also understand how little
technical knowledge they sometimes have about the printing process. I
can't tell you how many times I've had to explain why things don't look
like they did on *their* (fill in your brand here) monitor. (Match prints,
people!)
: Still the typical graphic designer rapidly realizes that what they see
: on screen is often rather unlike what they get from the printer; such
: experience is so common, and frustration so high, that it should make
: them wary of expecting *graphical control of output over the Web* of
: all things. Still many ``graphic designers'' claim that this is
: desirable, as if it were possible.
:
: Unfortunately when distributing images across the Web they will be
: displayed on all sorts of thingies with visual properties often very
: different from those of paper or the sort of system that usually graphic
: designers tend to like.
:
: There are huge problems in devising graphic designs whose effect and
: aesthetics can survive mutilation by random output devices (and again,
: such issues are totally different from those of authoring HTML). Perhaps
: the appreciation of your work comes from your ability to deal with such
: issues successfully, more or less consciously.
I got involved with the web as a hobby, and I've put a lot of thought (and
experimentation!) to work making my images degrade nicely on many systems,
as well as being bandwidth friendly. Virtually every image is saved in
different formats, with varying levels of compression. I check it all both
on my Mac (my authoring station) and my PC, in several different browsers.
(Sorry Lynx-using folks, but the only sites I check using your browser are
commercial sites. I honestly just don't bother on my personal site. It's a
graphical playground, and simply not designed for you.) Not an easy task,
and not a task easily understood by most designers. I know print work, and
it's actually easy compared to web graphics. (Although itty-bitty web
graphics are very easy on the RAM, a good thing!)
: As to me, if I were a graphic designer I would be daunted by the task of
: making designs that look good across even a small spectrum of output
: devices. For example, just the problem that most image formats are
: bitmapped and *don't scale* would depress me.
It ain't easy, it is daunting, yet it *is* possible to do well. I answer
any well defined questions other folks ask of me, I really want more
people to be able to do this well. Graphic Design *for* the WWW is a field
that is still being defined. It's a new specialty in it's own right, and
is going to experience some growing pangs. Just because there's a lot of
mis-steps being made, doesn't negate it's validity.
: I like to sprinkle HTML documents with some icons/pictures here and
: there, because that can well help to follow the content/structure of the
: document (after all even books have illustrations), and being unable to
: be sure that these will actually add value by being if anything
: readable... You have all my simpathy.
Hey, I didn't even start this thread! Note my quote below, this has been
my guiding light *long* before .sig files, and here I find myself becoming
a specialist in an entirely new (often misunderstood) field. FWIW, I'm
also an expert on Oriental rugs, antique childrens books, among a few
other esoteric disciplines. So, I'll stick by my quote!
Tero Paananen
ste...@foresight.co.uk (Stewart Dean) writes:
>>Can HTML put text in arbitary colors, sizes, or fonts? No.
>Colour? Yep <tedt color="#ff00ff">
Uh, <FONT COLOR="#xxxxxx">
Tell me, what will the text colors be in my browser?
>Size? Yep <h1></h1> or <text size=+3> these are relative.
<FONT SIZE="+3">
What will the text size (as in 18pt) be on my browser?
>>Can HTML indent text, set paragraph margins? No.
>Indent yep. <ul> can be used for that. Paragraph margins can be sort
>of done with <blockquote> although this is not advised.
Will the text be intended in my browser?
>>Can HTML place any element at a specific place on the page? No.
>If you know HTML you can. There are several ways to do this. Tables,
>spacer tags, frames etc..
What will this look like, if I'm using a resolution smaller than what you
had in mind?
How will this look like with a browser not able to use frames?
>>Can HTML specify the size of the page? No.
>Sort of again, Frame support allows a certain amount of this.
"Sort of", describes the situation quite well. You can not do precise
page layout with HTML, all you can do is "sort of layout".
>>Can HTML insert arbitary whitespace anywhere in the page?
>Yes. Either using spacer tags, <pre> or the escape character for
>space (can't remeber what it is off the top of my head.
Spacer tags??? I didn't know these existed? Might I enquire an URL
pointing to the appropriate specs?
Multiple spaces are supposed to be collapsed.
>I suggest you learn modern HTML before claiming to know what if can
>and can't do.
You did mean Netscape HTML? Or is it Microsoft HTML? Or HTML2.1? Or
<insert-your-fav-vendor-here> HTML?
Will you also be shipping an appropriate web browser with your HTML
documents?
>Stewart Dean
-TPP
Alan J. Flavell
On Sun, 21 Apr 1996, Jeff Walker wrote:
> Everywhere I look I see postings from people wanting to know how to
> manipulate HTML into some sort of page layout language, and impatient
> or insulting responses from HTML purists telling them to forget it.
> That they need to trust the browser, let the browser decide how the
> page will look. Content, not presentation, they admonish.
>
> To a graphic designer, this is like hearing they have to send their
> jobs to a printer and let the printer decide what fonts to use, what
> colors, where elements are placed.
Right in one. HTML is just like sending one's job to the printer.
Details of the display are at the whim of the reader and their
browser. You as author are not in control. That's why it's not a
good language for graphic design.
See (for example):
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/slitchfield/htmlfun.htm
http://www.mcsr.olemiss.edu/~mudws/webhints.html
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~tilt/cgh/
> "Logical" is appealing from a theoretical standpoint, but in the real
> world folks want "physical" results. Especially with more graphic
> designers coming on board. They want more control over how their
> pages will look, and who can blame them?
How is that going to work when I'm out in the field, viewing
your lovingly crafted HTML document on a black-and-white laptop?
Or having it read to me over the phone by the "Web on demand"
service?
"Click here to download a 17inch truecolor monitor", eh?
Whatever you may feel that your graphic designers are entitled
to, reality is denying it to them. Not some stubborn nut like me.
I'm just trying to point out to you how it is. Don't blame it on
us that reality is so.
best regards
Mike Batchelor
In <4lt8ah$s...@newsgate.dircon.co.uk> ste...@foresight.co.uk (Stewart Dean) writes:
>mik...@Capitol.Net (Mike Batchelor) wrote:
>>It has nothing to do with designers vs. techies. It's a hammer vs.
>>screwdriver issue.
>PDF is not HTML, they are different media and do different jobs, that
>is clear. To say HTML *is not* a page layout language is like saying
>Purple Haze is not music because there is no conductor or sheet music
>involved.
OK, if HTML is a page layout language, where is the <pagebreak> command?
HTML is not a page layout language, because in order to become device
independent, it discarded the concept of "page" altogether.
To say HTML is a page layout language is like saying Purple Haze can be
covered by the Boston Pops, and will sound just the same.
>I kind of see PDF as Fax and HTML as email.
I kind of see PDF as a page layout language, and HTML as a hypertext markup
language.
>HTML is and will be whatever we want it to be.
Oh yeah? Where is <HR SRC="bar.gif">?
Where is <UL PLAIN>?
Where is an indent attribute for <P>?
Where is <FIG>, <NOTE>, <FN>, and the rest of the (now expired) HTML 3
draft?
Where are stylesheets?
Where are any number of features people on this newsgroup keep asking
about, but that Netscape and Microsoft haven't bothered to implement in the
past year and a half? Is Netscape really responding to what people want
from the Web? I don't think so. I think they are responding to what they
think their shareholders think the Web audience wants.
Mike Batchelor
>mik...@Capitol.Net (Mike Batchelor) wrote:
>>>I takes time to prepare and is not garanteed to be readable for
>>>you viewer.
>>But <font face="doodad" size="+4"> is??
>No. That's how *not* to do fonts on the internet. The solution has
>not arrived yet - that's why I pointed out the forthcoming solutions.
>Anyway in this case the face tag can be egnored and you still retain
>the content.
>The key is in degradability.
Inline PDF degrades quite nicely on Lynx. I get a [LINK] indicator at
least, and hopefully some ALT text that gives me an idea of what it is that
you are offering me. I can download it, and view it later when I have
access to a plaform with a PDF viewer.
[ about Adobe webfonts or some such ]
>>This will work really well on Lynx, I;m sure, or on current Netscape
>>versions. Besides, what is the difference between upgrading to a browser
>>that support Bitstream webfonts, and upgrading to a browser that supports
>>PDF inline?
>PDF is all or nothing. A page with font additions to it will still be
>readable in LYNX just as it is today. If half the web went over to
>PDF then the majority of the internet would disappear to the vast
>majority of users. Think about what you said.
I have, and Lynx does what it can with PDF - downloads it so you can take it
somewhere that has a PDF viewer.
For years, file made available via ftp were also accessible by people who
had only E-mail access, and no TCP/IP or PPP. Lynx is much the same sort of
utility, in many ways. It can't directly display most of the media types,
but it can access them, and that's all it needs to do. I don't know how
many times I have gone searching for documentation for this and that, using
Lynx, because it's quick, and encoutering a PDF or PS document has never
been a problem. I just download it and view the document later at my
leisure. Thankfully, the Web has built-in features that (usually) indicate
to the browser what the media type is, so it can decide whether or not to
display it directly (if the server is set up right).
Mike Batchelor
>I got involved with the web as a hobby, and I've put a lot of thought (and
>experimentation!) to work making my images degrade nicely on many systems,
>as well as being bandwidth friendly. Virtually every image is saved in
>different formats, with varying levels of compression. I check it all both
>on my Mac (my authoring station) and my PC, in several different browsers.
>(Sorry Lynx-using folks, but the only sites I check using your browser are
>commercial sites. I honestly just don't bother on my personal site. It's a
>graphical playground, and simply not designed for you.)
Just because someone is browsing with Lynx, doesn't mean they don't have
access to a platform that can display your images. Why don't you include
ALT text that describes your art images, and if someone using Lynx wants to
view them, they can decide to do so based on your description. In fact, a
lot of people (myself included) browse with Lynx on a X Window workstation.
XV does a better job of displaying images than Netscape for Unix. All I have
to do to see your image is select the link to it (Lynx turns <IMG> into <A
HREF> automatically), and Lynx will launch XV to display the picture.
Your audience may not be who you think they are. Why force me to use an
inferior image display program (Netscape) when I have a superior one at hand
(XV)? That's the whole point of these discussions.
DocOzone
In article <4m0fvg$3...@annapolis.capitol.net>, mik...@Capitol.Net (Mike
Batchelor) wrote:
: In fact, a
: lot of people (myself included) browse with Lynx on a X Window workstation.
: XV does a better job of displaying images than Netscape for Unix. All I have
: to do to see your image is select the link to it (Lynx turns <IMG> into <A
: HREF> automatically), and Lynx will launch XV to display the picture.
:
: Your audience may not be who you think they are. Why force me to use an
: inferior image display program (Netscape) when I have a superior one at hand
: (XV)? That's the whole point of these discussions.
Good point. FWIW, that's the first time I've heard how viewing from
Lynx *really* works, and why you'd want to view that way. I work from a
Mac or a PC, and don't have access to XV. My *personal* site still
wouldn't work very well for this style of viewing, as it's set up as a
kind of visual puzzle box, with obscure, neat looking pictures, leading to
other neat looking pictures. Not the most serious use of the WWW, but a
lot of folks enjoy it. My commercial sites would probably work just fine
for viewing in the fashion you described, but you probably wouldn't even
*know* there were any images, for the most part. I'll admit, graphics on
the web are mostly a lot of fluff, but done correctly they make viewing
more enjoyable. Nothing very bad about that.
While "page layout" is a laughably poor choice of words for the
logical layout of HTML "pages", I'd bet that most of the confusion centers
around the similarities of names. HTML documents are frequently referred
to as "pages", which they aren't, and people *can* influence how their
"pages" will display. Unfortunately the term "Page Layout" is already used
by the print industry to describe a similar, but different function.
Perhaps we need a new term for this? It might help defuse some of
misunderstandings I see all too often here.
FWIW, I now refer to myself as a "WWW & Graphics Designer". There's
probably still mucho room for misunderstanding with this one, but it was
as close as I could get to what I *do* and what I *know*, which is how
best to optimize graphics for display on the WWW. I also do "page layout",
but that's related to my print career, and has nothing to do with the web.
<g>
Your pal, -doc-
Alan J. Flavell
On Sun, 21 Apr 1996, Stewart Dean wrote:
> At the end of a day you can not control
> what people want from the web.
Well said. And so long as people insist on being able to view
hypertext on character mode terminals, authors can't control
graphic design. And so long as people want to use monochrome
displays, authors can't control colour. And so long as anyone
(blind or not) wants to use a speaking machine, you can't insist
on visual presentation.
best regards
Alan J. Flavell
On Mon, 22 Apr 1996, Jerry Kindall wrote:
(DocOzone wrote "more of us than there are of you")
> Who is "us" and who is "you" in this sentence?
I thought he meant there were more authors than readers on the WWW.
;-)
Mike Batchelor
>In article <4m0fvg$3...@annapolis.capitol.net>, mik...@Capitol.Net (Mike
>Batchelor) wrote:
>: Your audience may not be who you think they are. Why force me to use an
>: inferior image display program (Netscape) when I have a superior one at hand
>: (XV)? That's the whole point of these discussions.
> Good point. FWIW, that's the first time I've heard how viewing from
>Lynx *really* works, and why you'd want to view that way. I work from a
>Mac or a PC, and don't have access to XV. My *personal* site still
Well, good. I am glad to took the time to describe it to you.
> FWIW, I now refer to myself as a "WWW & Graphics Designer". There's
>probably still mucho room for misunderstanding with this one, but it was
>as close as I could get to what I *do* and what I *know*, which is how
>best to optimize graphics for display on the WWW. I also do "page layout",
>but that's related to my print career, and has nothing to do with the web.
I like the title "Web Site Producer" or "Web Content Producer".
It describes what the person actually does fairly precisely, and has an air
of importance about it. :)
Stewart Dean
p11...@hiirihaukka.cs.tut.fi (Tero Paananen) wrote:
>ste...@foresight.co.uk (Stewart Dean) writes:
>>>Can HTML put text in arbitary colors, sizes, or fonts? No.
>>Colour? Yep <tedt color="#ff00ff">
>Uh, <FONT COLOR="#xxxxxx">
Opps, yep. For some reason my brain insisted that the font tag must
be text 'cos it seemed to make more sence. In reality it's the Font
tag (a Netscape invention?)
I realise that most of the tags I suggested were fixes that a lot of
people use. People are demanding that HTML be used for page layout.
As it is most of use workarounds.
>Tell me, what will the text colors be in my browser?
If you have 256 colours and Netscape/Microsoft more or less what I
state. If not then it'll be what ever colour you browser descides.
>What will the text size (as in 18pt) be on my browser?
Does your browser support point sizes? New one on me.
>>>Can HTML indent text, set paragraph margins? No.
>>Indent yep. <ul> can be used for that.
>Will the text be intended in my browser?
If you browser does it does, if it don't it don't. Also if you <ul>
in Netscape you get an indent, you only get dots if you use <li> with
it.
>How will this look like with a browser not able to use frames?
Much like another page in you browser if the author is competent.
>>>Can HTML specify the size of the page? No.
>>Sort of again, Frame support allows a certain amount of this.
>"Sort of", describes the situation quite well. You can not do precise
>page layout with HTML, all you can do is "sort of layout".
Very true. Currently HTML (in general) is not a designed for more
than simple text and graphic layout. The point is the demand exsists
for greater layout control using HTML and a popular browser.
>>>Can HTML insert arbitary whitespace anywhere in the page?
>>Yes. Either using spacer tags, <pre> or the escape character for
>>space (can't remeber what it is off the top of my head.
>Spacer tags??? I didn't know these existed? Might I enquire an URL
>pointing to the appropriate specs?
Sorry, by this I mean spacer images, for some reason refered to some
as spacer tags.
>Multiple spaces are supposed to be collapsed.
Depends - <pre> swithes it off and Netscape is fussy on line breaks as
well.
>You did mean Netscape HTML? Or is it Microsoft HTML? Or HTML2.1? Or
><insert-your-fav-vendor-here> HTML?
I mean Netscape HTML. Academics and Military gave birth to the net,
now the corporations are taking control. This is getting off the
subject somewhat, perhaps a 'who controls the web' topic might be
appropiate?
>Will you also be shipping an appropriate web browser with your HTML
>documents?
Why, what do you use?
Tero Paananen
ste...@foresight.co.uk (Stewart Dean) writes:
>>>Colour? Yep <tedt color="#ff00ff">
>>
>>Tell me, what will the text colors be in my browser?
>If you have 256 colours and Netscape/Microsoft more or less what I
>state. If not then it'll be what ever colour you browser descides.
So basically what you're saying is that you don't know for sure what the color
of the text will be in my browser?
>>What will the text size (as in 18pt) be on my browser?
>Does your browser support point sizes? New one on me.
Once again you're saying that you don't know what the text size will be in
my browser?
>>>>Can HTML indent text, set paragraph margins? No.
>>
>>Will the text be intended in my browser?
>If you browser does it does, if it don't it don't. Also if you <ul>
>in Netscape you get an indent, you only get dots if you use <li> with
>it.
Risking repetition, you're once again saying that you don't know if
the text will be intended in my browser?
I hope some of the readers of this article will by now begin to see how
well page layout and HTML fit together.
>>You did mean Netscape HTML? Or is it Microsoft HTML? Or HTML2.1? Or
>><insert-your-fav-vendor-here> HTML?
>I mean Netscape HTML. Academics and Military gave birth to the net,
>now the corporations are taking control. This is getting off the
>subject somewhat, perhaps a 'who controls the web' topic might be
>appropiate?
Are you sure Netscape HTML will be the One next year? What will you do
if it's not? Redesign all the WWW documents you've authored? Whose
going to pay for that? You or your customer?
>>Will you also be shipping an appropriate web browser with your HTML
>>documents?
>Why, what do you use?
Just my point, you don't know.
If you want precise control on how your WWW documents will be rendered on my
browser, you'd have to be sure that I use the same browser with the same
preferences than you did when you designed the document. This is why we
see so many of these "Download Netscape v2.0 or die" -pages all over the web.
Pisses me off, I already have a browser and I'm not bloody likely going to
spend time to download and install a new browser just to view the |<00lest
WWW site in the Universe.
>Stewart Dean
-TPP
Stewart Dean
p11...@laulurastas.cs.tut.fi (Tero Paananen) wrote:
>ste...@foresight.co.uk (Stewart Dean) writes:
>>If you have 256 colours and Netscape/Microsoft more or less what I
>>state. If not then it'll be what ever colour you browser descides.
>So basically what you're saying is that you don't know for sure what the color
>of the text will be in my browser?
If you're part of the majority of users it'll be as good as my colour.
If you chose a less featured browser, use Lynx etc or a black and
white screen you will not get this colour. HTML is designed to
degrade and does so very well with "correct" HTML.
>>>What will the text size (as in 18pt) be on my browser?
>>Does your browser support point sizes? New one on me.
>Once again you're saying that you don't know what the text size will be in
>my browser?
Point size is not the issue, I deal with pixels not points. With
relative sizes browsers like MSIE allow you to increase and decrease
text size for clarity. I can and do declare relative sizes.
>Risking repetition, you're once again saying that you don't know if
>the text will be intended in my browser?
<edit - see last message in thread>
>Are you sure Netscape HTML will be the One next year? What will you do
>if it's not?
>>Why, what do you use?
>Just my point, you don't know.
Chances are it's Netscape in some form or other.
>If you want precise control on how your WWW documents will be rendered on my
>browser, you'd have to be sure that I use the same browser with the same
>preferences than you did when you designed the document. This is why we
>see so many of these "Download Netscape v2.0 or die" -pages all over the web.
>Pisses me off, I already have a browser and I'm not bloody likely going to
>spend time to download and install a new browser just to view the |<00lest
>WWW site in the Universe.
First off, noone is aiming to control you browsing habits. You browse
what you want how you want. By adding tags that allow more control
the presentation of information Netscape have added much to the
internet. If your browser does not support these tags the tags will
be ingnored and you will get the content without the additional
presentaton. Presentation adds to the clarity and navigation of
information.
I have never included a 'download Netscape' button on my page, nor
will I ever as, I beleive, it is up to the user to browser with which
ever tool they seem fit. The majority (and I feel safe in saying any
server log fill will iterate this) perfer to use Netscape or one which
recognises netscape tags.
The WWW still has a long way to go before it levels out. People are
demanding more control over layout and many are not concerned about
logical tags. My concern is the future of the Internet and would like
to see the majority, not a select minority, get their wishes.
Currently HTML is a mess because it is being pulled two (if not more)
ways at once. Which way do you want to pull it?
T. Joseph W. Lazio
>>>>> "SD" == Stewart Dean <ste...@foresight.co.uk> writes:
SD> p11...@laulurastas.cs.tut.fi (Tero Paananen) wrote:
>> ste...@foresight.co.uk (Stewart Dean) writes:
>>> If you have 256 colours and Netscape/Microsoft more or less what I
>>> state. If not then it'll be what ever colour you browser
>>> descides.
>> So basically what you're saying is that you don't know for sure
>> what the color of the text will be in my browser?
SD> If you're part of the majority of users it'll be as good as my
SD> colour.
You haven't read this group for long, then. Watch it for a while.
You'll notice folks coming in saying, "I was looking at my documents
on another machine and the colors were awful!"
SD> If you chose a less featured browser, use Lynx etc or a black and
SD> white screen you will not get this colour. [...]
Which is also an excellent reason to consider the use of color very
carefully. If you depend upon color to deliver a message, there will
be some people who will miss the message. And before it is suggested
that we don't have time for all those folks without the latest color
monitors, what about the 30% or so of caucasian men who suffer from
one form or another of colorblindness?
[...]
SD> First off, noone is aiming to control you browsing habits. You
SD> browse what you want how you want. By adding tags that allow more
SD> control the presentation of information Netscape have added much
SD> to the internet. If your browser does not support these tags the
SD> tags will be ingnored and you will get the content without the
SD> additional presentaton. Presentation adds to the clarity and
SD> navigation of information.
If that were the case, maybe. However, what is happening/has
happened is that people get lazy. "I'll design(sic) for Netscape and
don't care about those who can't keep up with the latest technology."
(sic)
[...]
SD> The WWW still has a long way to go before it levels out. People
SD> are demanding more control over layout and many are not concerned
SD> about logical tags.
Which is a shame. We already have desktop publishing. Why not use a
better tool if you want control over layout? Use HTML for its power
--- the ability to deliver information regardless of the device or
platform.
SD> My concern is the future of the Internet and would like to see
SD> the majority, not a select minority, get their wishes.
This select minority...are you thinking of Bill Gates and Marc A.?
SD> Currently HTML is a mess because it is being pulled two (if not
SD> more) ways at once. Which way do you want to pull it?
I want it pulled in the direction which will benefit all authors,
rather than the bottom line of a couple of companies. Indeed, I can't
think of a better reason to support an *open* standard, like those the
W3 folks try to develop.
--
Cornell knows I exist?!? | e-mail: la...@spacenet.tn.cornell.edu
Lt. Lazio, HTML police | http://astrosun.tn.cornell.edu/students/lazio/
STOP RAPE | ICBM: 42:20:08 N 76:28:48 W 305 m alt.
sci.astro FAQ at http://astrosun.tn.cornell.edu/students/lazio/sci.astro.html
Alan J. Flavell
On 26 Apr 1996, Stan Friesen wrote:
> In article <4lptqg$t...@Holly.aa.net>, gre...@aa.net (Lee Gregory ) writes:
> |>
> |> Even with style sheets, I'm not sure you'd have complete uniformity
across all
> |> platforms.
>
> Even with style sheets I am certain that there will *not* be uniformity
> across platforms.
You might add that "complete uniformity" is not even desirable.
Do you want a page displayed on a 17-inch high resolution true colour
display to look exactly the same as one displayed on a tiny monochrome
palmtop display? Of course you don't! That's the problem that HTML
set out to solve - allowing browsers to exploit the capababilities
of each different presentation platform to its respective fullest
extent... platform-dependent style sheets can help in that task,
whereas HTML itself (that has no practical way of determining the
customer's display configuration) cannot.
And I didn't mention the speaking machine.
best regards
Alan "I keep seeing 'Back to' places I haven't come from"
Alan J. Flavell
On Sat, 27 Apr 1996, Stewart Dean wrote:
(purports to demonstrate that HTML with de facto vendor-defined extensions
"can" specify exact layout, including fonts, colours, exact amounts of
white space, etc. at this time)
Well, if you understand that a browser that's incapable of doing these
things (whether because it does not support the vendor-defiled tags, or
because it's monochrome, or because it does not use fonts, or because it
isn't even presenting the document visually - or even, to take a scenario
that you seem to consider beneath contempt, what if it actually complies
with the HTML3.0 draft spec?) is going to ignore your specifications, then
yes, sure, in _that_ sense you "can" get what you want. I "can" put the
tag <coffee cream=yes sugar=no class=fresh> into my documents and I "can"
get what I want[*]. Just that all except one of the browsers on the WWW
will ignore it.
As long as you are clear just what you are doing, and what results it can
produce on your readers' presentation agents, then you "can" do that.
Now, would you care to explain all these pathetic postings asking
questions like how to force an image to be displayed just 5 pixels from
the bottom of the window, or all the text indented just half an inch from
the left, or precise amounts of white space in the middle of running text.
Then explain to the people who have just seen their lovingly laid-out page
on a different browser, and find it looks like a garbage dump. Since you
"can" do all these wonderful things, why are these people having such
desperate trouble making it happen? With a properly designed layout
language, they'd just look it up in the manual and it would work, wouldn't
it? I can do that with MS Office, and there's far more people out there
who have that than would be using my favourite browser.
[*]hypothetically, of course
>Web Space: http://www.foresight.co.uk/stewart
[INLINE]
W E L C O M E
Look, you're a graphic designer. There's room for both of us, but
it stands to reason that a graphic designer would have a different
agenda than someone who is making textual information available on
the WWW. Please, don't try to cripple HTML into being a visual
layout language. We have a job to do with hyper _text_ markup, and
we need a portable language for it.
best regards
Alan "I keep seeing 'Back to' places I haven't come from"
p.s there's a rather poetic typo in my posting. I decided not
to correct it. ;-}
Alan J. Flavell
On 28 Apr 1996, Mike Batchelor wrote:
> many times I have gone searching for documentation for this and that, using
> Lynx, because it's quick, and encoutering a PDF or PS document has never
> been a problem. I just download it and view the document later at my
> leisure.
..or configure ghostview as a helper application to Lynx, and view
it right there and then (if you're in a situation where this is
feasible, i.e with access to a windowing display).
Lynx is _available_ to users who have only a VT100 terminal. But that
does not mean that everyone who chooses to run Lynx has, in fact, nothing
more than a VT100 terminal.
Simon Hargreaves
ibur...@leland.Stanford.EDU (Ian Burrell) wrote:
>There is nothing in the HTML standard that requires many of the
>conventions used in Netscape that people think allow page layout. In
>fact, more sophisticated browsers with better layout control probably
>would break most of these tricks.
are sorely mistaken
><h1> makes no defintion of the font size. A conforming browser just
>needs to make headers prominent, which could be done with color, fonts,
>or placement. And it can't be used inside paragraphs.
size. Font size is a very useful tag and to not use it would be spite.
If you had your way the center tag would never have been introduced
I'm sure you said that HTML lost it's purity as soon as someone was
able to, shock! horror! center text.
>Relative font sizing is nice, but page design sometimes requires that
>using only "times, bold, 14pt", and there isn't any way of specifying
>this in HTML.
If your page design requires you to only display it in times,bold,14pt
to look good I feel as though you have no place in web design, being
able to cope within a range of browsers, screen sizes, font sizes and
colours seperates web designers from graphics designers and sad
purists like you.
>you meant <dl> that is even worse, because you can't guarantee that
>the definition will be indented or on a separate line. Besides, what
>is I want my paragraph indented 2 inches or margins twice as wide as
>usual. Or text divided into two columns. Can't do that either.
If you can't live without indented paragraphs of a specific size or
the thought of not being able to define where something is exactly
then PDF is probably the best place for you.
>>>Can HTML specify line spacing? No.
>>Not that I know of.
>>
>>>Can HTML place any element at a specific place on the page? No.
>>If you know HTML you can. There are several ways to do this. Tables,
>>spacer tags, frames etc..
>>
>How precise is this layout control? In TeX, I can tell it exactly how
>much whitespace I want separating elements, in PageMaker I place
>elements anywhere on the page. With tables, only relative spacing is
>possible, and the layout cell size is variable and large.
If you know what your doing you don't need precision.
>>>Can HTML specify the size of the page? No.
>>Sort of again, Frame support allows a certain amount of this.
This bit I don't agree with frames should be used sparingly if at all,
and you really shouldn't unduly impose screen sizes onto the browser
anyway.
>Sort of isn't good enough in page design. Besides, frames are evil.
attributing the description evil to a concept like frames is a little
sad, get a life. (the word evil should be reserved for Microsoft and
governments, although the dividing line between these two is very
blurred)
>>>Can HTML insert arbitary whitespace anywhere in the page?
>>Yes. Either using spacer tags, <pre> or the escape character for
>>space (can't remeber what it is off the top of my head.
>But whitespace with <pre> can only be introduced in single lines or
>space characters. Spacer images are not part of HTML and are a poor
>way to introduce whitespace.
What exactly is wrong with spacer images? and in what way are they not
part of HTML or are you going to stop people using the img tag aswell
>>In our choatic times there is no such thing as plain HTML. Standard
>>HTML yes, the standard I consider difined by the majority - anything
>>else should be considered as guidlines, specialist tags or proposals.
>The standard is defined by the standard body, which is the W3C and
>IETF for HTML. The Netscape extensions aren't defined by a majority,
>they are defined by a single player, and in many cases there isn't
>good standard-type documentation on the tags. Since they are used by
>many authors, this makes them popular, not standard.
You really do live in your own sad little world if you think that HTML
is being defined by W3C, HTML is defined by what people use and what
browsers support," Wake up and smell the coffee!"
>Good graphics design frequently requires rigid control of elements
>such as color, size, spacing, and placement, and requires knowledge of
>the output device. Standard HTML gives none of this control, and
>while the extensions give some more control, it isn't enough for good
>page design. HTML was designed to do logical markup of structure with
>presentation hints can be given in stylesheets. There is a place on
>the Web for layout, for logos, toolbars, title pages, etc., but HTML
>doesn't provide the control necessary, which is why is frustrates
>graphic designers.
Then these frustrated graphic designers need to learn a thing about
page design then don't they.
> HTML shouldn't be made into a poor page layout
>language when there are good ones available, but there aren't any
>simple, platform independent, hypertext languages except HTML.
exactly how big is a web page compared to a similair PDF page (file
size).
IMHO HTML is a good page layout language and can be made to do some
wonderful things, it is meant to be a platform independent, viewing
hardware independant and above all descriptive language. It is however
reasonable to work with a spec range and assume that the majority of
people will have at least a minimum spec, If you want to debate a
minimum expected spec that's a different matter.
As far as I can see graphic designers should grow up as far as file
size is considered and stop using image maps when the can't get HTML
to do what they want it to do. Graphic design and web design are not
the same thing, nobody with any sense said they were.
> - Ian
A word of advice there Ian stop being a ludite of HTML and get a
life. Don't take HTML to seriously, I'm sure it doesn't take you
seriously.
Simon...
webmaster @cafesurf
http://www.cafesurf.co.uk
Warren Steel
Simon Hargreaves wrote:
> What exactly is HTML standard if you think that HTML stands still you
> are sorely mistaken
I wish you could convince browser makers of this! They have failed
to implement useful things which are requested here every week:
Tabs, Banners, Style Sheets, Figures with Captions, <UL PLAIN>,
<UL SRC= >, <HR SRC= >, which have been around for more than
a year!
> Are you saying that when you produce a web page you don't use font
> size. Font size is a very useful tag and to not use it would be spite.
> If you had your way the center tag would never have been introduced
> I'm sure you said that HTML lost it's purity as soon as someone was
> able to, shock! horror! center text.
HTML has been able to center texts since 1993, before Netscape
even existed. HTML also has a way to modify font sizes: <BIG>
and <SMALL>. If you try to go much further than this, you are
doing a grave disservice to those with large basefonts (sight
impaired) or with small basefonts (for small display areas).
If you use <FONT SIZE= > for headings or special emphasis, you
are failing to communicate this information to browsers that
don't recognize the vendor's <FONT> tag; <h1>...<h6>, <EM>, and
<STRONG>, on the other hand, are recognized by all browsers!
<FONT COLOR= > and <FONT FACE= > are even more counterproductive
and self-deceptive.
> What exactly is wrong with spacer images? and in what way are they not
> part of HTML or are you going to stop people using the img tag aswell
By "spacer images" I think Ian means those "invisible" images
used by D. Siegel and others to fine-tune graphic appearance.
Of course, even with ALT="", the smallest "single-pixel gif"
amounts to a full-sized ugly icon for Netscape users who have
auto-image loading turned off, which is a widespread and legitimate
method of browsing. Besides, as you put it so well,
> If you can't live without indented paragraphs of a specific size or
> the thought of not being able to define where something is exactly
> then PDF is probably the best place for you.Your posting has other sound advice as well--I realize, Simon,
that you have positioned yourself as a "moderate," and am
responding only to those comments that IMHO need rebuttal or
amplification.
> You really do live in your own sad little world if you think that HTML
> is being defined by W3C, HTML is defined by what people use and what
> browsers support," Wake up and smell the coffee!"
Perhaps you should see who comprises and funds "W3C"--Netscape,
Sun, Microsoft, Spyglass, IBM, and all the big players. See also
who authored the latest working drafts for embedded objects:
http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/TR/WD-object.html
Perhaps browser makers are smelling the coffee, and are realizing
that they can compete to make better browsers that implement
a common language instead of inventing unrealistic ill-considered
jackleg tags of their own.
--
Warren Steel mu...@mail.olemiss.edu
Department of Music University of Mississippi
URL: http://www.mcsr.olemiss.edu/~mudws/
Arnoud Galactus Engelfriet
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
In article <4mk4g2$r...@melody.waverider.co.uk>,
sim...@custard.co.uk (Simon Hargreaves) wrote:
> ibur...@leland.Stanford.EDU (Ian Burrell) wrote:
> ><h1> makes no defintion of the font size. A conforming browser just
> >needs to make headers prominent, which could be done with color, fonts,
> >or placement. And it can't be used inside paragraphs.
>
> Are you saying that when you produce a web page you don't use font
> size. Font size is a very useful tag and to not use it would be spite.
Well, I don't use it, and my site is pretty good to navigate. I'm not
saying there is absolutely NO use for font size, but to use it instead
of headers is a very bad idea, if only because search engines won't
understand it.
> If you had your way the center tag would never have been introduced
> I'm sure you said that HTML lost it's purity as soon as someone was
> able to, shock! horror! center text.
It doesn't, as long as you use ALIGN=CENTER. That degrades well on
other browsers which don't support it. Netscape's <CENTER> tag is
another matter entirely. "This page now<CENTER>here</CENTER>."
> >But whitespace with <pre> can only be introduced in single lines or
> >space characters. Spacer images are not part of HTML and are a poor
> >way to introduce whitespace.
> What exactly is wrong with spacer images? and in what way are they not
> part of HTML or are you going to stop people using the img tag aswell
Try viewing a page with spacer images, with Autoload images turned off.
Galactus
- --
To find out more about PGP, send mail with HELP PGP in the SUBJECT line to me.
E-mail: gala...@stack.urc.tue.nl - Please PGP encrypt your mail if you can.
Finger gala...@turtle.stack.urc.tue.nl for public key (key ID 0x416A1A35).
Anonymity and privacy page: <http://www.stack.urc.tue.nl/~galactus/remailers/>
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: 2.6.3i
Charset: cp850
iQCVAgUBMY5sHDyeOyxBaho1AQEUwAQAlr20W8VS0zCNiBj+xUr2zEPRYa1B66ng
i5UCp0lt+xgHGM/lmWzvfHciQPZZaPvBHaXOsJyNOSBNlcKfBPlUliNVLH/twvsW
XSDYaR5bK3S5Xqk4g6pXMeiJhuRXkOfeJh8IjkdJ20oQSJpyR3lUxFwsWSc6mVsc
FVao2fNgca4=
=WxrJ
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
Mr. Eyesore
[obvious troll or nimrod, your guess]
[A whole lotta crap cut]
>If your page design requires you to only display it in times,bold,14pt
>to look good I feel as though you have no place in web design, being
>able to cope within a range of browsers, screen sizes, font sizes and
>colours seperates web designers from graphics designers and sad
>purists like you.
>
Honey, the only thing sad around here is you. Come back in a year
or so when you've learned a bit and see how ridiculous you sound.
Dejanews will still be there.
I won't bother explaining, but you might wish to visit www.w3.org and
maybe read up on device-independence. I know it's something you're
not familiar with, but most 'shit-for-brains-duh-I-can-make-money-from
da-WWW-cause-I'm-a-groovy-type-of-guy' don't anyways, so you'll fit
right in.
As you say, "Wake up and smell the coffee", and "get serious".
Mr. Eyesore
'An asshole wonka bee'
Stewart Dean
fac...@tezcat.com (Mr. Eyesore) spat:
>In article <4mk4g2$r...@melody.waverider.co.uk>, sim...@custard.co.uk (Simon Hargreaves) wrote:
>[obvious troll or nimrod, your guess]
>[A whole lotta crap cut]
>>If your page design requires you to only display it in times,bold,14pt
>>to look good I feel as though you have no place in web design, being
>>able to cope within a range of browsers, screen sizes, font sizes and
>>colours seperates web designers from graphics designers and sad
>>purists like you.
>>
>Honey, the only thing sad around here is you. Come back in a year
>or so when you've learned a bit and see how ridiculous you sound.
>Dejanews will still be there.
>I won't bother explaining, but you might wish to visit www.w3.org and
>maybe read up on device-independence. I know it's something you're
>not familiar with, but most 'shit-for-brains-duh-I-can-make-money-from
>da-WWW-cause-I'm-a-groovy-type-of-guy' don't anyways, so you'll fit
>right in.
>As you say, "Wake up and smell the coffee", and "get serious".
>Mr. Eyesore
>'An asshole wonka bee'
<flame>
First off I have no respect for those using names like Mr. Eyesore.
you've got a name, use it.
<p>
Secondly if you havnt got anything interesting, relevent or usefull
you neednt bother exercising your ego.
<p>
Simon's veiws were relvent and interesting. If you don't agree say
why otherwise you may well get mistake for a shit-for-brians. If you
do this kind of posts for kicks, well then the 'sad' word should be
brought into play.
</flame>
Stewart Dean
Warren Steel <mu...@mail.olemiss.edu> wrote:
>Simon Hargreaves wrote:
> HTML has been able to center texts since 1993, before Netscape
>even existed. HTML also has a way to modify font sizes: <BIG>
>and <SMALL>. If you try to go much further than this, you are
>doing a grave disservice to those with large basefonts (sight
>impaired) or with small basefonts (for small display areas).
>If you use <FONT SIZE= > for headings or special emphasis, you
>are failing to communicate this information to browsers that
>don't recognize the vendor's <FONT> tag; <h1>...<h6>, <EM>, and
><STRONG>, on the other hand, are recognized by all browsers!
><FONT COLOR= > and <FONT FACE= > are even more counterproductive
>and self-deceptive.
>
<BIG>? <SMALL>? Very cute but probably useless. What next <BIGGER>?
<BIGGEST>?
>> You really do live in your own sad little world if you think that HTML
>> is being defined by W3C, HTML is defined by what people use and what
>> browsers support," Wake up and smell the coffee!"
> Perhaps you should see who comprises and funds "W3C"--Netscape,
>Sun, Microsoft, Spyglass, IBM, and all the big players. See also
>who authored the latest working drafts for embedded objects:
>http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/TR/WD-object.html
>Perhaps browser makers are smelling the coffee, and are realizing
>that they can compete to make better browsers that implement
>a common language instead of inventing unrealistic ill-considered
>jackleg tags of their own.
Perhaps you should have a look at the spec for HTML 3.2.
It's almost chicken and egg these days.
Stewart Dean
"Alan J. Flavell" <fla...@mail.cern.ch> wrote:
>On Sat, 27 Apr 1996, Stewart Dean wrote:
>(purports to demonstrate that HTML with de facto vendor-defined extensions
>"can" specify exact layout, including fonts, colours, exact amounts of
>white space, etc. at this time)
>Well, if you understand that a browser that's incapable of doing these
>things (whether because it does not support the vendor-defiled tags, or
>because it's monochrome, or because it does not use fonts, or because it
>isn't even presenting the document visually - or even, to take a scenario
>that you seem to consider beneath contempt, what if it actually complies
>with the HTML3.0 draft spec?) is going to ignore your specifications, then
>yes, sure, in _that_ sense you "can" get what you want. I "can" put the
>tag <coffee cream=yes sugar=no class=fresh> into my documents and I "can"
>get what I want[*]. Just that all except one of the browsers on the WWW
>will ignore it.
>[*]hypothetically, of course
Er, yes. Quite. By the way draft specs are draft specs - vendor tags
have been vended. Meanwhile in the real world...
>>Web Space: http://www.foresight.co.uk/stewart
> [INLINE]
> W E L C O M E
Opps missed an alt tag. Oh dear. You werent missing anything.
>Look, you're a graphic designer. There's room for both of us, but
>it stands to reason that a graphic designer would have a different
>agenda than someone who is making textual information available on
>the WWW. Please, don't try to cripple HTML into being a visual
>layout language. We have a job to do with hyper _text_ markup, and
>we need a portable language for it.
Both of us? So what you claim to be? How do you know I'm not one of
*you* as well?
I have no aim in 'crippling' HTML. We have a portable language for
hyper text mark up and it includes mark up for graphics and embedded
media. If you only can see text you will only get text and nothing
but the text. This is why HTML is so popular and why the internet has
taken off.
>best regards
>Alan "I keep seeing 'Back to' places I haven't come from"
Ian Burrell
In article <318FFF...@ais.net>, <ca...@ais.net> wrote:
>1. How many people use mono palmtops for www browsing?
Not very many. How many people use game consoles or televisions?
They have low graphics ability and might some day be used for web
browsing. How many people use 21" high resolution true color
displays? I guess we should fix the window size and colors so the
look bad on that too.
>2. When you are reading a book, do you complain about the fonts?
Sometimes. Wouldn't you like to change the font in a book? The
layout in some magazine? Do you prefer a certain look to your
newspaper and sometimes wished that your paper (or neighbor's paper)
looked that way?
>3. What difference does it make to you if we chose what fonts you
> look at in one particular page. Typographers have been studying
> human responses and psychology to figure out what the human eye
> responds to the easiest. Shouldn't we trust the experts in this
> area?
They must not work for the browser makers. HTML with stylesheets is
the perfect place for good typography.
- Ian
--
-- Ian Burrell == ibur...@leland.stanford.edu **
<URL:http://www-leland.stanford.edu/~iburrell/>
Rune's Rule: If you don't care where you are, you ain't lost.
Seth Graham
In article <4mr2mh$6...@newsgate.dircon.co.uk>,
ste...@foresight.co.uk (Stewart Dean) wrote:
|Warren Steel <mu...@mail.olemiss.edu> wrote:
|
|>Simon Hargreaves wrote:
|
|>HTML has been able to center texts since 1993, before Netscape
|>even existed. HTML also has a way to modify font sizes: <BIG>
|>snipped.] <h1>...<h6>, <EM>, and <STRONG>, on the other hand,
|>are recognized by all browsers! <FONT COLOR= > and <FONT FACE= >
|>are even more counterproductive and self-deceptive.
|>
|<BIG>? <SMALL>? Very cute but probably useless. What next <BIGGER>?
|<BIGGEST>?
|
Actually, I think the reasoning for <big> and <small> to be a very sound one.
It's like the difference between <i> and <em>, <b> and <strong>. It simply
leaves the final result open to the end user, their browser, and their
preferences. Something I've always admired HTML and the Web for; my
ability to control personal things like the font I use and it's size. When an
author takes that freedom away from me, it's either time to see if my browser
has a way to get MY preferences back, or find another site to look at.
--
Seth.
"Humanity is its own paradox."
Stan Friesen
In article <4mr2mh$6...@newsgate.dircon.co.uk>, ste...@foresight.co.uk (Stewart Dean) writes:
|> <BIG>? <SMALL>? Very cute but probably useless. What next <BIGGER>?
|> <BIGGEST>?
No. The best interpretation is that, where it is feasable, they *nest*.
That is, <BIG> does almost exactly what Netscape's <FONT SIZE=+1> does,
and <SMALL> does almost exactly what Netscape's <FONT SIZE=-1> does.
--
s...@elsegundoca.attgis.com sar...@netcom.com
The peace of God be with you.
Gary Barnes
>Several Problems with your logic:
>
>1. How many people use mono palmtops for www browsing?
Well, I know 3 myself. Most old pages look great. Many new pages might
just as well be white noise.
>2. When you are reading a book, do you complain about the fonts?
Regularly.
<tan> I can read old-fashioned HTML pages easily, by setting my browser to
show text as 14pt Bookman. I cannot read some newspapers easily, because
the font is too small. If my eyes degrade further, I will still be able to
read html. Newspapers will be readable if they are published in html, but
not if they are only in print. If html allows the writer to define the
format, I become blind. </tan>
>3. What difference does it make to you if we chose what fonts you
> look at in one particular page.
If the textual content is important, you need to know your readership to
sensibly choose the font. Sometimes you know this, sometimes not.
And yes, sure, there are areas of the web where voluntarily limiting your
audience is sensible.
> Typographers have been studying
> human responses and psychology to figure out what the human eye
> responds to the easiest. Shouldn't we trust the experts in this
> area?
Well, yes. They should design the style sheets used by the *browsers*.
With, of course, the option for me to wreck their handiwork, as a reader,
if I so desire.
Summary: I am not convinced that there is one true answer in this debate.
But it does seem as though one side has all the money, and this has the
effect of disempowering the reader.
Cheers, Gary "click here to see what your browser does when you click
here" Barnes.
_______________________________________________________________
Gary Barnes Gorman House Arts Centre
gary...@ozemail.com.au Ainslie Avenue, Braddon
61 06 249 7377 (Phone) Canberra, ACT, 2612
61 06 247 7739 (FAX) Australia
_________________________________________________________________
Alan J. Flavell
On Tue, 7 May 1996 ca...@ais.net wrote:
> Several Problems with your logic:
For which value of "your"? [1]
> 1. How many people use mono palmtops for www browsing?
Better ask that on comp.sys.psion or other relevant group. Who cares
how many or few they are? If they are your potential customers, you need
them. HTML aims to make information available to all readers; if you
won't do that, that's your problem. Counting minority groups is not
a technique of HTML authoring.
> 2. When you are reading a book, do you complain about the fonts?
Yes, sometimes. What does that prove? If anything, it proves that it
would be better to allow the reader to choose the fonts they like.
This is, after all, the HTML way: send out the information marked up for
what it is, and invest your typographical expertise in the browser
design in order to display that information to the best ability of each
platform.
> 3. What difference does it make to you if we chose what fonts you
> look at in one particular page. Typographers have been studying
> human responses and psychology to figure out what the human eye
> responds to the easiest. Shouldn't we trust the experts in this
> area?
The experts say that when authoring HTML for the WWW, you can't know which
fonts (if any) the reader has available. Heck, even newbies know that, if
they have taken the trouble to do a little background reading. How can you
"choose" something that isn't available? There isn't even a mechanism
for finding out whether it's available! So, if you have typographic
design expertise, let's see you putting it where it can be effective: into
browser design.
best regards
Alan "I keep seeing 'Back to' places I haven't come from"
[1] (Hint: it's customary on usenet to quote small extracts of the article on
which you are commenting, so as to make it clear what points you are
addressing. See the new user FAQs on news.announce.newusers for further
helpful advice.)
Chris Gray
In article <318FFF...@ais.net>, ca...@ais.net writes:
> 1. How many people use mono palmtops for www browsing?
Not many now, but ask Allpen how many people are waiting for NetHopper
to come out for the Newton.
> 2. When you are reading a book, do you complain about the fonts?
Very rarely, because most publishers employ graphic designers who know
their business: which is to present the content of the book in a way
that is both clear and visually pleasing, without drawing attention
to themselves.
I don't believe these designers get their results by pasting every
paragraph and every heading onto the page by hand; I think you'll
find that style sheets and content-based markup have a lot more to
do with it.
> 3. What difference does it make to you if we chose what fonts you
look at in one particular page. Typographers have been studying
human responses and psychology to figure out what the human eye
responds to the easiest. Shouldn't we trust the experts in this
area?
Those experts will tell you that what looks good on paper can look
lousy on screen, and that what works on a high-res screen with anti-
aliasing doesn't work on low-res without. If I find something that's
worth the effort of converting to a Newton Book so that I can carry it
around with me, I'll be reading it using Newton fonts.
> Thanks.
A pleasure.
--
__________________________________________________________________________
Chris Gray Chris...@bcs.org.uk Compuserve: 100065,2102
__________________________________________________________________________
David Newman
The simple answer to this discussion is to repeat 100 times:
"The customer is always right"
Now that we have a system that lets the customer decide how he or she
wants to view a docuement, why impose our own views on them? Try washing
the bare feet of some of your readers like Jesus did with disciples and
prostitutes - they are superior beings (after all, the customers pay for
your work). Learn humility.
--
Dr. David R. Newman, Queen's University, Information Management Dept.
BELFAST BT7 1NN, Northern Ireland. mailto:d.r.n...@qub.ac.uk
http://www.qub.ac.uk/f&info/staff/dave/index.html
Stan Friesen
|>
Probably more than you think.
[Certainly I can see doing this while on a trip].
|> 2. When you are reading a book, do you complain about the fonts?
If it uses too many different fonts, or uses one that is too hard to read,
you bet I do.
Of course that is why most books use nothing but Times Roman or New Century
Schoolbook.
|> 3. What difference does it make to you if we chose what fonts you
|> look at in one particular page. Typographers have been studying
|> human responses and psychology to figure out what the human eye
|> responds to the easiest. Shouldn't we trust the experts in this
|> area?
Most people who use the <FONT FACE=...> stuff are NOT experts. Quite the opposite
in fact. In all probability the people who chose the *default* fonts for the
browser come closer to being experts in font usage than almost any Web author.
Daniel Boggs
Warren Steel wrote:
>
> Perhaps browser makers are smelling the coffee, and are realizing
> that they can compete to make better browsers that implement
> a common language instead of inventing unrealistic ill-considered
> jackleg tags of their own.
I sure hope so. Different users want different flavors, so the different
browser mfgr.s can have their own user interfaces. At the same time, users
should not have to put up with such wide margins of extension support for
display. User interface and speed leaves more room to compete for users
than they can handle now.
Opps, where did this soap box come from. Oh, well. I got it off my
chest.
--
===> Daniel Boggs <===---------------===> mailto:Dan...@trader.com <===
http://www.trader.com/users/5010/1020/imt.htm >IMT Internet Services
http://www.trader.com/users/5010/1020/sci.htm >Spinal Cord Support Page
http://www.trader.com/users/5010/1020/ >Personal Home Page
___________________ Member of The HTML Writers Guild __________________
gry...@iaehv.nl
>1. How many people use mono palmtops for www browsing?
Not palmtops, but using low colour monitors frequently. If I need the
high resolution I have to sacrifice on the colours. Most web pages
nowadays look horrendous on a 16 colour 1600x1200 screen! Netscape
is particularly bad in this respect, several other browsers allow the
colours to degrade much more gracefully. But that's beyond this issue.
>2. When you are reading a book, do you complain about the fonts?
Books rarely, magazines quite often. And I know that many people with
bad eyesight *need* the control a browser gives over the choice of fonts.
>3. What difference does it make to you if we chose what fonts you
> look at in one particular page. Typographers have been studying
> human responses and psychology to figure out what the human eye
> responds to the easiest. Shouldn't we trust the experts in this
> area?
To an extent.
I don't usually run a browser on a pc. I may not have the font your
page is requiring, or I may have it but it's named differently. May
font definition may be totally incompatible with yours so downloading
isn't a solution either (provided I'll put up with loading hundreds of
kilobytes worth of font definition to view a page). And if my browser
can't display the intended font the page is no doubt going to look
horrible because -you- have tied the layout to that particular font.
Lining up things that on my browser don't line up and so on.
In short, since you can't tell as a designer what printer is going to
be making a hardcopy of your design there's little point in asserting
a fine control over it. In many cases it will look garbled. Or worse.
Why don't *you* trust typographers? Some could be working for the
company that designed the browser?
Eric Bohlman
Seth Graham (as...@orion.alaska.edu) wrote:
: Actually, I think the reasoning for <big> and <small> to be a very sound one.
: It's like the difference between <i> and <em>, <b> and <strong>. It simply
: leaves the final result open to the end user, their browser, and their
: preferences. Something I've always admired HTML and the Web for; my
: ability to control personal things like the font I use and it's size. When an
: author takes that freedom away from me, it's either time to see if my browser
: has a way to get MY preferences back, or find another site to look at.
Exactly. When you're designing graphics on paper, you specify an actual
font size because you know what will look best on a surface of the size
you're designing for. When you're designing for the Web, you don't know
what size your surface will be, or even if it will really be a surface, so
you have no idea whether a particular font will look good or bad to
whoever is reading your document (in fact, you do know that it will look
good to some people and bad to others). So all you can do is hint, and
say "this stuff will look better if it's bigger (smaller) than what came
before it."
Eric Bohlman
Chris Gray (cg...@btmaa.bel.alcatel.be) wrote:
: In article <318FFF...@ais.net>, ca...@ais.net writes:
: > 2. When you are reading a book, do you complain about the fonts?
: Very rarely, because most publishers employ graphic designers who know
: their business: which is to present the content of the book in a way
: that is both clear and visually pleasing, without drawing attention
: to themselves.
: I don't believe these designers get their results by pasting every
: paragraph and every heading onto the page by hand; I think you'll
: find that style sheets and content-based markup have a lot more to
: do with it.
Definitely. How else would a book be able to go from hardback to
paperback? The typographical conventions that look good for one will
look at best shitty for the other. Whether or not a font looks good
depends on the size of the page, which is why print authors don't get to
specify their own fonts unless they're vanity-publishing; the publisher
knows that fixing one set of fonts at the beginning is going to severely
limit the way they can market the author's work.
Stewart Dean
eboh...@netcom.com (Eric Bohlman) wrote:
>Seth Graham (as...@orion.alaska.edu) wrote:
You're totally right in saying you can't specify font size - point
sizes are a hangover from print days. What is usefull is having some
normal physical response in a browser. As we know, HTML has a
physical and logical side. At the moment I have little need for
logical tags and prefer the more physical ones. <strong> doesnt tell
me what it does, like wise with <em> etc where as with <i> I know it's
probably going to be italics and not some other variant.
In the standardisation of HTML it is usefull to know that where
possible <b> come out bold as a opposed to <strong> which could, by
the nature of the tag, be anything from larger text, red text or even
flashing. Some may say it's users choise - fine, but it makes the
creation of anything above pages of text a problem and have other
knock on effects.
Perhaps style sheets, if done correctly, could solve the problem of
linking physical and logical styles together and make everyone
happier.
Could someone tell me the merits of logical tags over physical tags?
(this is not a loaded question, I am honestly interested in replys.)
Stewart Dean
Web Producer - Artisan - Sugar Addict
Web Space: http://www.foresight.co.uk/stewart
Brandi Weed
sim...@custard.co.uk (Simon Hargreaves) mathelode:
>If you had your way the center tag would never have been introduced
>I'm sure you said that HTML lost it's purity as soon as someone was
>able to, shock! horror! center text.
It never needed to be when Netscape could have just introduced the
ALIGN=CENTER attribute instead...
--
Brandi Weed
bra...@wheel.dcn.davis.ca.us
http://www.dcn.davis.ca.us/~brandi
Alan J. Flavell
On 12 May 1996, Jorn Barger wrote:
> Apparently some people have the opposite view, but I think only people
> who don't any point to *esthetics*.
Well, my sense of aesthetics includes grammatical sentences, and
that wasn't one.
> Yes. This newsgroup is very prejudiced against design, and that's
> just willful blindness, ...
This is complete nonsense, but you are just so bound up in your
argument that you can't see it.
> Yes, the design seems to be moving towards giving both sides what they
> want, at the cost of a moderate increase in complexity. Certainly,
> the big browser publishers (Netscape, etc) will not accept anything
> that denies their users fine control.
Netscape still does "deny the user fine control", as it always has done.
UdiWWW gives the _user_ much finer control. So do the various Mosaics.
What Netscape and IE purport to do is to give the _author_ control over
things that they in principle cannot control, like the layout of
characters of unspecified size on a window of unspecified size on a
display (or indeed not a display) of unknown characteristics using an
unknown selection of fonts.
Which of course then leads to authors asserting that they are only
"authoring for" the subset of readers who are willing or able to conform
with the author's prejudices as to display capability. They might as well
author in MS Word, or PDF, for all the use they make of the benefits of
HTML.
> There are real merits in areas like info-retrieval, but this should
> be totally separate from page layout.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Like, logical markup in HTML, and page layout in the style sheet.
Gosh, we agree, after all. :-}
> The supposed merits for portability (italics-for-the-blind) are deeply
> bogus, but I've been unable to explain this to Alan, Scott, etc etc etc
Indeed, you _have_ been unable to explain it. As a matter of
interest, how does one express italics in Arabic or Chinese?
If they are such a fundamental feature of text representation as
you'd have us believe, I guess the answer must be very simple and
well-known to you. I believe the Chinese were the first to exploit
moveable type, so they presumably have the most experience in this
field.
Tell me, by the way, how much experience you actually do have of
blind WWW readers, to be able to assert to us with such confidence
that "the supposed merits ... are deeply bogus"? Do you suppose
that blind readers are the only ones using speaking machines (I
wonder what that robotic voice was that answered the telephone to
me recently)?
> Basically, the question of structural markup is a very-long-term
> research problem in AI, and the current HTML structural markup is
> extremely clumsy and limited
No dispute there. But I can still tell the difference between a
quotation, a citation, emphasis and a botanical name, which I'd
no longer be able to do if I were forced to mark them all up with
<i> without distinction.
Logical markup has been working for me for at least a decade, and in HTML
for nearly half that time. I don't need to understand AI to make it work
for me.
<FONT COLOR= FACE= etc.> still has unquantifiable effects on a display
whose properties are entirely unknown to me. I want better- designed
presentation agents, that have the ability to present a logically- marked-
up document in a well-designed fashion, exploiting whatever resources each
display platform may have at its disposal. With overview mode for
interactive situations. With sensibly placed page breaks when printing on
paper. With graceful adjustment for those with impaired vision. With
graceful adjustment to unusually small displays like palmtops. With the
option to switch to multiple column mode when a large window is available.
And so on. None of these are matters which an author can usefully "author
for", without knowing the display's characteristics in quite some detail.
I don't know why you dismiss the people who want to put design effort
into the very place where it can be genuinely effective, as being
"very prejudiced against design".
best regards
Steve Knoblock
Stewart Dean wrote:
>
> eboh...@netcom.com (Eric Bohlman) wrote:
>
> >Seth Graham (as...@orion.alaska.edu) wrote:
>
> >: Actually, I think the reasoning for <big> and <small> to be a very sound one.
> >: It's like the difference between <i> and <em>, <b> and <strong>. It simply
> Perhaps style sheets, if done correctly, could solve the problem of
> linking physical and logical styles together and make everyone
> happier.
>
> Could someone tell me the merits of logical tags over physical tags?
> (this is not a loaded question, I am honestly interested in replys.)
>
The idea is that <strong> means content that is emphasized whereas <i>
means to apply a particular format to text. One is conent the other is
layout. HTML is supposed to only indicate document structure not its
layout.
Style sheets are the only anwser. We need layout but need to preserve
content markup. By ataching styles to sturctural content both goals are
met without irritating the other.
Cheers
Steve
--
_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/
_/ City Gallery - History of Photography
http://www.webcom.com/cityg
_/ PhotoGen - Photography and Genealogy Mailing List
http://genealogy.org/~mangold
_/ Member: National Stereoscopic Association
http://www.tisco.com/3d-web/nsa/nsa.htm
Steve Knoblock
Webmaster/Listowner
knob...@ix.netcom.com
T. Joseph W. Lazio
>>>>> "JB" == Jorn Barger <jo...@MCS.COM> writes:
JB> In article <4n349b$5...@newsgate.dircon.co.uk>, Stewart Dean
JB> <ste...@foresight.co.uk> wrote: [...]
>> In the standardisation of HTML it is usefull to know that where
>> possible <b> come out bold as a opposed to <strong> which could, by
>> the nature of the tag, be anything from larger text, red text or
>> even flashing. Some may say it's users choise - fine, but it makes
>> the creation of anything above pages of text a problem and have
>> other knock on effects.
JB> Yes. This newsgroup is very prejudiced against design, and that's
JB> just willful blindness, when you see what sites are most admired.
On the contrary, many of the people you disparage would like nothing
better than to see an increased ability to suggest presentation.
We realize, however, that the nature of the *World*-Wide Web is that
we, as authors, have no idea what browser, what version of what
browser, what equipment, etc. is used in accessing my HTML documents.
*Therefore* it is important that content and presentation be
separated.
Let me say that again, since many on this group seem to somehow think
that HTML pragmatism is biased against presentation. There's *nothing
wrong* with presentation. You just have to know your limits.
>> Perhaps style sheets, if done correctly, could solve the problem of
>> linking physical and logical styles together and make everyone
>> happier.
JB> Yes, the design seems to be moving towards giving both sides what
JB> they want, at the cost of a moderate increase in complexity.
JB> Certainly, the big browser publishers (Netscape, etc) will not
JB> accept anything that denies their users fine control.
You mean like I, as a *user* of Netscape, can shut off <FONT> if I'd like?
>> Could someone tell me the merits of logical tags over physical
>> tags? (this is not a loaded question, I am honestly interested in
>> replys.)
JB> There are real merits in areas like info-retrieval, but this
JB> should be totally separate from page layout.
I'm just curious, but why do you think info-retrieval is so minimal?
How do you think anybody's going to find anything on the Web if not by
info-retrieval methods? Do *you* want to spend all day searching
aimlessly for information on some topic?
JB> The supposed merits for portability (italics-for-the-blind) are
JB> deeply bogus, but I've been unable to explain this to Alan, Scott,
JB> etc etc etc
Only if you are wedded to a 20th century view of publishing.
As Warren Steel has pointed out so well, the Web is about
*communication*. The simple fact of the matter is that portability
means you can communicate with people, no matter what equipment they
are using.
JB> Something like <li> is very convenient, and lies somewhere between
JB> structure and layout, I think.
?? <LI> stands for List Item. How does that have anything to do with layout?
JB> Basically, the question of structural markup is a very-long-term
JB> research problem in AI, and the current HTML structural markup is
JB> extremely clumsy and limited, and should not be forced on people.
You're right. If the browser companies were really interested in
providing us authors with better tools, they'd be moving in the
direction of giving us SGML tools. That way I could define new tags
and your browser could use them.
JB> The <h*> system is poorly defined. <cite> and <quote> are poorly
JB> defined. <p> is not real clear. <em> and <strong> are really
JB> just euphemisms, and have no meaning except by reference to
JB> italics and bold. (The best you can say is that <em> equals <i>
JB> minus <cite>.)
?? <H*> stands for a header --- what's poorly designed about that?
<EM> means EMphasized and if you think that means *just* italics,
well, you're too wedded to 20th century publishing. To emphasize text
means to make it stand out. In fact, if you visit my home doc (and
you're using a style-sheet aware browser), you'll find that emphasized
text means text set in red-on-white.
--
Cornell knows I exist?!? | e-mail: la...@spacenet.tn.cornell.edu
Lt. Lazio, HTML police | http://astrosun.tn.cornell.edu/students/lazio/
STOP RAPE | ICBM: 42:20:08 N 76:28:48 W 305 m alt.
sci.astro FAQ at http://astrosun.tn.cornell.edu/students/lazio/sci.astro.html
Jorn Barger
[ Stewart Dean has managed to say simply, clearly, and *gently*
exactly what I've been heatedly asserting for some time in this
group.]
In article <4n349b$5...@newsgate.dircon.co.uk>,
Stewart Dean <ste...@foresight.co.uk> wrote:
[...]
>You're totally right in saying you can't specify font size - point
>sizes are a hangover from print days. What is usefull is having some
>normal physical response in a browser.
Yes. Basic ability to indent, skip lines, specify *relative* sizes,
center, etc.
> As we know, HTML has a
>physical and logical side. At the moment I have little need for
>logical tags and prefer the more physical ones. <strong> doesnt tell
>me what it does, like wise with <em> etc where as with <i> I know it's
>probably going to be italics and not some other variant.
Apparently some people have the opposite view, but I think only people
who don't any point to *esthetics*.
>In the standardisation of HTML it is usefull to know that where
>possible <b> come out bold as a opposed to <strong> which could, by
>the nature of the tag, be anything from larger text, red text or even
>flashing. Some may say it's users choise - fine, but it makes the
>creation of anything above pages of text a problem and have other
>knock on effects.
Yes. This newsgroup is very prejudiced against design, and that's
just willful blindness, when you see what sites are most admired.
>Perhaps style sheets, if done correctly, could solve the problem of
>linking physical and logical styles together and make everyone
>happier.
Yes, the design seems to be moving towards giving both sides what they
want, at the cost of a moderate increase in complexity. Certainly,
the big browser publishers (Netscape, etc) will not accept anything
that denies their users fine control.
>Could someone tell me the merits of logical tags over physical tags?
>(this is not a loaded question, I am honestly interested in replys.)
There are real merits in areas like info-retrieval, but this should
be totally separate from page layout.
The supposed merits for portability (italics-for-the-blind) are deeply
bogus, but I've been unable to explain this to Alan, Scott, etc etc etc
Something like <li> is very convenient, and lies somewhere between
structure and layout, I think.
Basically, the question of structural markup is a very-long-term
research problem in AI, and the current HTML structural markup is
extremely clumsy and limited, and should not be forced on people.
The <h*> system is poorly defined. <cite> and <quote> are poorly
defined. <p> is not real clear. <em> and <strong> are really just
euphemisms, and have no meaning except by reference to italics and
bold. (The best you can say is that <em> equals <i> minus <cite>.)
I just saw a .sig file that used full html markup for a name and a
URL-- html/head/title/body/etc, maybe twenty tags in all. I saw it
as a sarcastic parody of excessive formatting-overhead, but I fear
the author was the sort of person who enjoys having an intricate
challenge of following rules. Some people seem to take this a
step further, and enjoy making *others* follow rules...
j
-==---
... i loved you, so i drew these tides of men into my hands... _+m"m+_"+_
lynx http://www.mcs.net/~jorn/ ! Jp Jp qh qh
best-of news:alt.music.category-freak ! O O O O
ftp://ftp.mcs.com/mcsnet.users/jorn/ Yb Yb dY dY
...and wrote my will across the sky in stars. --R.Graves "Y_ "Y5m2Y" "
Gary Barnes
In article <4n349b$5...@newsgate.dircon.co.uk>, ste...@foresight.co.uk
(Stewart Dean) wrote:
>
>Could someone tell me the merits of logical tags over physical tags?
>(this is not a loaded question, I am honestly interested in replys.)
>
Logical tags, like all logical markup, reduce the language of information
design to a small number of defined "functions". Eg "this is a heading",
"this is a parenthetical note".
This has the major advantage that a _graphic_ designer (or audio designer,
or whatever) can then design a way to interpret this logical, structural
information in a way which:
a) is possible with the available viewing technology;
b) takes some advantage of that technology; and
c) takes into account the person viewing it, both absolute factors (eg
poor eyesight), and preferences (eg prefers reading black text on white,
or prefers printing everything out and taking it home!)
The obvious downside is that this involves reducing the number of
information design options. The information (which may include "style",
attitude etc) that a lot of contemporary design is trying to transmit
simply don't fit into this scheme.
The example you give (italic versus emphasis in html) is a good one. On a
low resolution browser, and especially one with a limited font technology,
italic text may at worst not exist, and at best be very difficult to read.
So a sensible browser would interpret "emphasis" as something it _could_
do without illegibility, eg red text, or bold, or underline.
If your intent in using this tag was to emphasise the text, the browser
would have done the right thing. But if you intended the italicness of the
text to signify something else, it would not.
Just a few thoughts...
Cheers, Gary.
Richard Goldfinder
ste...@foresight.co.uk (Stewart Dean) wrote:
>Could someone tell me the merits of logical tags over physical tags?
>(this is not a loaded question, I am honestly interested in replys.)
At the risk of stating what has probably been stated numerous times
in this newsgroup, I'll go out on a limb and give my compelling
reason.
Freedom.
Back when I used to edit documents (and sometimes still do), I was a
space freak. I made extremely optimal use of whitespace, minimizing
or maximizing at certain strategic places. I chose different fonts
to enhance readability, and changed margins and columns to match
these concepts.
With HTML, this is no longer a concern. I no longer have to worry
about font face/size, margins, or whatever. I leave it up to the
user to decide how it looks, and only need to worry about the
content. It's quite a bit less stressful that way.
Mike Batchelor
>In article <4n349b$5...@newsgate.dircon.co.uk>,
>Stewart Dean <ste...@foresight.co.uk> wrote:
>>In the standardisation of HTML it is usefull to know that where
>>possible <b> come out bold as a opposed to <strong> which could, by
>>the nature of the tag, be anything from larger text, red text or even
>>flashing. Some may say it's users choise - fine, but it makes the
>>creation of anything above pages of text a problem and have other
>>knock on effects.
>Yes. This newsgroup is very prejudiced against design, and that's
>just willful blindness, when you see what sites are most admired.
B.S. HTML itself is prejudiced against "design", in the way you mean it.
When someone points out that the sun rises every day, that doesn't mean
they're prejudiced against darkness.
>>Perhaps style sheets, if done correctly, could solve the problem of
>>linking physical and logical styles together and make everyone
>>happier.
>Yes, the design seems to be moving towards giving both sides what they
>want, at the cost of a moderate increase in complexity. Certainly,
>the big browser publishers (Netscape, etc) will not accept anything
>that denies their users fine control.
Again, B.S. If Netscape "will not accept anything that denies their users
fine control" then why can you only select a single fixed and a single
variable font in its Preferences? Other browsers let the user choose a
different font face and size for each HTML element.
--
+ + + %%%%% Mike Batchelor % mik...@Capitol.Net %%%%% A Division
Capitol.Net %%%%%%%%%%% 301-306-9090 % V.34/ISDN %%%%%%%%%%% of
+ + + %% Serving Washington DC, No.VA, and Maryland %% Criticom, Inc.
Jorn Barger
Toby Speight <t...@ansa.co.uk> wrote:
> [...] I think you believe somehow
>that appearance of a document's visual representation is something
>which can and should be the responsibility of the document's writer -
This is the core of our differences, probably. I see it as a right,
you see it as a responsibility.
>who, presumably must know the details of every reader's screen,
>printer, font system, window size, and colour palette?
This is just emotional *non-thinking*. As I've said, over and over,
WordPerfect's 'RevealCodes' markup was format-oriented, but entirely
portable. Some machines had to substitute non-italics for the
'italic' code, but that's really a very simple sort of substitution to
do.
[...]
>Jorn> Yes. This newsgroup is very prejudiced against design, ...
>Not at all, Jorn. What "this newsgroup" (to use your
>over-generalisation)
All it takes to create a sociopathic newsgroup is a few people who
assert their opinions via emotionalism rather than debate. (When is
any ciwah purist going to accurately paraphrase my position???)
> understands is that the sort of fine-grained
>layout design that you continually refer to isn't possible on the
>World-wide Web.
*Infinitely* fine grain is impossible, yes. But if we *create* future
versions of HTML wisely, the degree of ***portable fine-grained
control*** can be maximized at a very high level.
> The two aspects of HTML where design is important are
>(1. Author) Structuring a set of information to make it easily
>navigable, and (2. Browser) using the authors' indication of structure
>to derive an appropriate (and hopefully aesthetically-pleasing)
>presentation for the equipment in use.
So, you're not 'against' design, you just think it has to be taken
away from the designer and given to a set of algorithms?
[...]
>Jorn> ... Certainly, the big browser publishers (Netscape, etc) will
>Jorn> not accept anything that denies their users fine control.
> [...] do you mean that *authors* are the "users" of Netscape browsers?
The idea that WWWeb-surfers should have fine control over how pages
are displayed seems patently absurd to me. I didn't anticipate that
you all would leap so eagerly into this misreading.
[escalating flammery damped]
j
Jorn Barger
Alan J. Flavell <fla...@mail.cern.ch> wrote, quoting me:
>> Apparently some people have the opposite view, but I think only people
>> who don't any point to *esthetics*.
>Well, my sense of aesthetics includes grammatical sentences, and
>that wasn't one.
(If you notice, Alan, I don't usually stoop to 'typo flames'. In
fact, my policy is to silently correct typos, so that the debate won't
be sidetracked by emotional irrelevancies.)
[...]
>What Netscape and IE purport to do is to give the _author_ control over
>things that they in principle cannot control, like the layout of
>characters of unspecified size on a window of unspecified size on a
>display (or indeed not a display) of unknown characteristics using an
>unknown selection of fonts.
This is black-and-white rhetoric. Yes, if you specify fontsize or
pagewidth in absolute units (eg: points, inches) then you lose
portability. But it would be very easy to extend HTML so that
designers have a high degree of fine control, using only *relative*
units (eg: xlarge, 25%).
[...]
>> There are real merits in areas like info-retrieval, but this should
>> be totally separate from page layout.
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>Like, logical markup in HTML, and page layout in the style sheet.
>Gosh, we agree, after all. :-}
The hidden cost of segregating layout in a separate document is that
every style has to be named. Good designers won't want to be bothered
by this, for the very good reason that most of their job is using
many fine variations on 'emphasis'. So WWWeb-design software would
have to offer a 'auto-generated symbolic names' option that would
name styles things like "JHG8478".
My suggestion (yet again) is that the primary name in any tag is the
formatting-unit (i, b, xlarge) and the style-name be given secondary
status: <i class=em>.
> [...] how does one express italics in Arabic or Chinese?
So, you imagine that the basic HTML structures are already language-
independent?
I'm not sure what the advantage of this would be, since the text itself
is not...
>If they are such a fundamental feature of text representation as
>you'd have us believe, I guess the answer must be very simple and
>well-known to you.
This is a fine example of your perfect inability to paraphrase my
position accurately.
I think the basic common-denominator of page design is WYSIWYG,
with accommodations made for screen resolution/size/shape etc.
Chinese HTML should allow Chinese designers to duplicate the page
designs of traditional Chinese publishing. I have no idea what
this involves... and I've a strong suspicion you haven't either.
[...]
>Tell me, by the way, how much experience you actually do have of
>blind WWW readers, to be able to assert to us with such confidence
>that "the supposed merits ... are deeply bogus"?
Well, I read the replies to my xposted query on that subject a couple
of months back. Didn't you?
> [...] I can still tell the difference between a
>quotation, a citation, emphasis and a botanical name, which I'd
>no longer be able to do if I were forced to mark them all up with
><i> without distinction.
Again, this is not what I've been advocating.
>Logical markup has been working for me for at least a decade, and in HTML
>for nearly half that time. I don't need to understand AI to make it work
>for me.
This is what the cavalry said, right before they encountered their first
tank regiment...
><FONT COLOR= FACE= etc.> still has unquantifiable effects on a display
>whose properties are entirely unknown to me.
And what percentage of displays is that? You've got your color screens,
your b&W screens, your big screens, your small-screens, your text-only
displays, your speech-synthesizers and braille displays... all of these
are pretty predictable, and the vast majority of them, statistically,
can handle WYSIWYG reasonably well.
Now, I know your reply will be "So, Jorn, you don't care about the .001%
whose display you haven't thought of???"
But in fact, I'm perfectly confident that their display will have a
simple and reasonable approach to translating <i>.
> I want better- designed
>presentation agents, that have the ability to present a logically- marked-
>up document in a well-designed fashion,
Okay-- are you implying that you'd rather entrust the browser's
algorithms to deliver the well-designed-ness, than design the page
yourself? I'm getting the distinct impression that that's really
what separates the purists from the designers on ciwah-- the purists
feel design as an ***unwelcome burden***.
> exploiting whatever resources each
>display platform may have at its disposal. With overview mode for
>interactive situations.
???
> With sensibly placed page breaks when printing on paper.
This problem ought to be solvable with simple AI.
> With graceful adjustment for those with impaired vision.
Yes. But why is <em> more graceful than <i>?
> With graceful adjustment to unusually small displays like palmtops.
And NTSC video, yes. There's probably a lot we have to learn about
how to resolve these best.
> With the
>option to switch to multiple column mode when a large window is available.
This is pretty challenging, AI-wise.
There's a simple implementation, which is just 'wrapping' the hidden
portion of a page from the bottom of the screen, like a second window
within the same frame.
But you also have to do page-break AI for the end of each column,
and instead of scrolling you'll have to substitute page-jumps.
A more-sophisticated solution might try to reformat the page, as
a designer would when she had several columns to work with. But
I think this is a long way off, and most designers won't want to
leave it up to the algorithms...
>And so on. None of these are matters which an author can usefully "author
>for", without knowing the display's characteristics in quite some detail.
Indeed. So my proposal is that they design for the highest-common
WYSIWYG display, knowing that lesser displays will be able to
'degrade' that resolution gracefully...
>I don't know why you dismiss the people who want to put design effort
>into the very place where it can be genuinely effective, as being
>"very prejudiced against design".
Structural markup is not design at all. It's the abdication of design.
j
Alan J. Flavell
On 13 May 1996, Jorn Barger wrote:
> I think the basic common-denominator of page design is WYSIWYG,
> with accommodations made for screen resolution/size/shape etc.
Well, I think we are designing a world wide information system, hopefully
with optimised presentation agents for each situation in which that
information is to be used.
Since you repeatedly accuse everyone of misrepresenting your
position, I won't say what I think you are designing. You must
speak for yourself.
If I wanted to simply design a page, to be displayed on a device
of known characteristics, then I don't think I would choose HTML
for the purpose. That isn't what HTML was conceived for, and, what's
more, it isn't very good at it. And it would have a long way to go
before it can achieve what postscript and PDF (as delivery formats)
or, say, MS Office are achieving routinely already.
> >Logical markup has been working for me for at least a decade, and in HTML
> >for nearly half that time. I don't need to understand AI to make it work
> >for me.
>
> This is what the cavalry said, right before they encountered their first
> tank regiment...
Ah, so you'd have us believe that author-specified WYSIWYG page layouts
are a major new technology, that we've somehow managed to completely
overlook in our blind stupidity.
I'm wasting my time. Must get on with something productive instead.
best regards
Stewart Dean
t...@ansa.co.uk (Toby Speight) wrote:
>EM does tell you what it does: it declares its content as being
>emphasised. You don't know what a browser or indexer or speech-
>synthesiser or translator will do with it, but you can be assured that
>it's the Right Thing. You say that "with <i> I know it's *probably*
>going to be italics." So you don't really know anything. And how are
>readers supposed to know what your italics are supposed to signify?
>Yes, a human reader may be able to infer it by context, but a software
>translator? (Clues: in German, word order conveys relative emphasis;
>I expect the mechanism in Sanskrit to be different to Roman alphabets;
>are you going to represent citations or biological names in italics,
>and haw are you going to distinguish these from emphasis?)
So what's the sanskrit for <em>? In German the word order conveys
emphasis - so therefore, as it has been said, content is King. As
languges change so the rules of type change and <em> and <strong>
become seamingly interchangeable. Sometime being specific avoids
confusion.
>>>>>> In article <4n53f3$g...@Mars.mcs.com>,
>>>>>> Jorn == "Jorn Barger" <jo...@MCS.COM> writes:
>Jorn> Apparently some people have the opposite view, but I think only
>Jorn> people who don't any point to *esthetics*.
>It's hard to parse this nonsentence, but I think you believe somehow
>that appearance of a document's visual representation is something
>which can and should be the responsibility of the document's writer -
>who, presumably must know the details of every reader's screen,
>printer, font system, window size, and colour palette?
Web design is designing with cross platform and degradability in mind.
A page created for the majority* will, with a few bad exceptions,
still present the content up to the limitation of your browser and
system. The simple truth is you don't need to know what one user has,
just what the range of users prefer.
* (80-90%, if not more, use a Netscape compatable browser, about 1-2%
use lynx. The other percentage use the spyglass or something that
handles at least some of HTML 3.2. Source: browser stats around the
web as well as our own log files)
>Stewart> In the standardisation of HTML it is usefull to know that
>Stewart> where possible <b> come out bold as a opposed to <strong>
>Stewart> which could, by the nature of the tag, be anything from
>Stewart> larger text, red text or even flashing. Some may say it's
>Stewart> users choise - fine, but it makes the creation of anything
>Stewart> above pages of text a problem and have other knock on
>Stewart> effects.
>What do you mean by "anything above pages of text," Stewart?
Er, anything above a page of text.
> Are you
>thinking of things that are beyond the remit of HTML, like formatted
>text and graphics?
Formatting text and graphics in a cross platform way are a strong part
of HTML and a strong reason for it's adoption.
>There are languages for such things (unfort-
>unately, they're mostly proprietary), like PostScript, PDF, GIF, and so
>on. Yes, you lose some of the platform-independence which HTML gives
>you (you gave that up anyway, when you decided to use I & B), but you
>keep some of it (eg PostScript is okay if you're only interested in
>bitmapped display systems).
PostScript - bitmapped? Postcript, on the whole, is vector. And as
for giving up platform independence by using <i> and <b>, the only
point you brought up is it might hamper other languages - <em> is more
platform independent over <i> I don't know as I suspect a browser
creator is more likely to include handling for <i> than <em>.
>The other thing you lose, in larger
>measure, is the ability to make meaningful indexes of your work - but
>you could produce your own index from the higher-level source you use
>to generate your PostScript or whatever.
So you tell your indexer to treat <i> and <em> the same. No reason
not to. Then providing you use standard header sizes then you tell
you indexer what heading is what - could be <h2> or could be <font
size=+1>. Make no difference to the program as it only looks for text
and has no knowledge of logical and physical tags, as do the vast
majority of internet users.
>Stewart> Perhaps style sheets, if done correctly, could solve the
>Stewart> problem of linking physical and logical styles together and
>Stewart> make everyone happier.
>Yes, they give authors a chance to hint at presentation rules, and
>they give readers more control over their software, if done
>correctly. And when conflicts occur, stylesheet schemes like CSS
>provide a means of resolution for good results.
I'll have to look up CSS but it looks like style sheets are quickly
becoming the holy grail of HTML. Cool.
>Jorn> ... Certainly, the big browser publishers (Netscape, etc) will
>Jorn> not accept anything that denies their users fine control.
>Really? You mean, if I use a Netscape browser, I can turn off those
>annoying FONT "commands"? And I can load inlines without having also
>to load background images?
Oh.. could get messy. Allowing the user control of their machine, I
agree, is key. Also allowing them the best possible presentation for
their machine is also.
>Stewart> Could someone tell me the merits of logical tags over
>Stewart> physical tags? (this is not a loaded question, I am honestly
>Stewart> interested in replys.)
>Jorn> There are real merits in areas like info-retrieval, but this
>Jorn> should be totally separate from page layout.
>Quite right, Jorn.
Now, as I understand, the reason for style sheets is to bring the two
concepts together. To devorce the appearance from the desired
message could result in a lot of confusion. By being able to define
<h1> as a physical style as well as a logical one makes sense. I
would also like to see tags suchs as <b1> for body text <c1> for
captions and even possible <sh1> for sub heading although <h2> etc
will probably do.
Define these in the header or refer to a comon style sheet (cached by
the browser) and layout of physical and logically correct HTML becomes
one and the same.
How logical tags are used in the real world has yet to be presented to
me. Thus my question 'what are the merits of logical tags'.
>Jorn> The supposed merits for portability (italics-for-the-blind) are
>Jorn> deeply bogus, ...
>Quite. So why invent italics-for-the-blind in the first place, Jorn?
>The rest of us here were quite happy with emphasis-for-the-blind,
>which is quite realistic to achieve. As soon as you begin to insist
>that only italics can be used to convey emphasis, you're making it very
>difficult to support anything other than visual display (and then only
>on platforms that support italics - many terminals don't). Your
>italic-for-emphasis markup is effectively useless for anything more
>advanced than printing, unless you constrain italics to be used _only_
>for emphasis.
>Jorn> Something like <li> is very convenient, and lies somewhere
>Jorn> between structure and layout, I think.
>How can a List Item be anything other than structure?
Because it indents and lays out a list on screen. "Ah but how do you
know it indents?". How do you know your user understands english?
Any one speak esperanto here?
>Jorn> <em> and <strong> are really just euphemisms, and have no
>Jorn> meaning except by reference to italics and bold.
>That's utter rubbish, and you (of all people) should know that.
>You've had to be told enough times! EM just means something should be
>considered more prominent than ordinary text, and STRONG that it is
>more prominent than EM. Nobody mentioned italics and bold, except as
>an example and recommendation. I prefer underline and bold&underline
>for printing, but colours for display, where possible. How are the
>meanings given by "reference to italics and bold"?
Italics means quote or stressed, bold means emphasised *and* strong.
You want <em> or <i> to be underlined on your printer, fine, you do
that. I bet most would prefer it italics. Now give me working
examples of where <em> is treated different to <i>.
Let's marry the physical and logical together and keep HTML simple
and solid.
Callie
jo...@MCS.COM (Jorn Barger) wrote:
>The hidden cost of segregating layout in a separate document is that
>every style has to be named. Good designers won't want to be bothered
>by this, for the very good reason that most of their job is using
>many fine variations on 'emphasis'.
But the hidden cost of NOT naming every style comes when you have
to revise the text and instead of being able to quickly apply new
formats to it, by redefining the styles, you have to find and alter
the "many fine variations" you have constructed.
Let's assume that the site at http://www.bigcompany.com
is being changed, and they want to make all the old pages match
the new ones. If all styles are named, one change in the style sheet
will do the whole site. If all the text consists of variations on a
single style, you are stuck with re-tweaking the layouts.
As for my level of expertise ... I have been in computer-aided
publishing since before desktop publishing, and even before PCs.
(Yup, that long!).
>> [...] how does one express italics in Arabic or Chinese?
>So, you imagine that the basic HTML structures are already language-
>independent?
They are in some. I helped design a newletter for a local Buddhist
monastery. I don't read Thai or Sanscrit, but they have <OL> <UL> and
<H1> equivalents, and I could follow the structure enough to add the
correct tags. Arabic has similar structures, just mirrored. Chinese
and Japanese ??? (you can actually snake back and forth on the
page with some styles of these)
>>I don't know why you dismiss the people who want to put design effort
>>into the very place where it can be genuinely effective, as being
>>"very prejudiced against design".
>Structural markup is not design at all. It's the abdication of design.
No - it's realizing that there is a time and a place for
everything: and the WWWeb isn't the place to insist on
total control over every pixel on someone else's screen.
Attempting to control design in a situation that is out
of your control is not design, it is utterly futile. A truly
professional designer would investigate the possibilities of the
Web and take advantage of its differences from print. You
seem to be intent on making it nothing more than on-line
copies of paper pages ... had you been alive in the middle ages
you would have been trying to get Gutenberg to make his press
do illuminated letters and whining about the demise of
scriptoriums.
Callie
Cal...@writepage.com |The Write Page for genre fiction:
http://www.writepage.com |All the books that are fun to read.
Alan J. Flavell
On Mon, 13 May 1996, Stewart Dean wrote:
> So you tell your indexer to treat <i> and <em> the same. No reason
> not to.
On the contrary. When I'm not being sloppy, I use <i> only for
those purposes that _don't_ have a logical tag associated available
(in practice I find that I use <i> alone for generic names, per
international standard; and I use <i><small> in place of the
non-existent de-emphasis tag. But HTML does not know that; only
I can supply that explanation. But (again, excluding my sloppy
days) <i> in my work should never mean <em> or <cite> or <q> etc.
What earthly reason would I want to tell the indexer to treat them
the same?
> Then providing you use standard header sizes then you tell
> you indexer what heading is what - could be <h2> or could be <font
> size=+1>.
This is just silly.
Mike Batchelor
>Alan J. Flavell <fla...@mail.cern.ch> wrote, quoting me:
>[...]
>>What Netscape and IE purport to do is to give the _author_ control over
>>things that they in principle cannot control, like the layout of
>>characters of unspecified size on a window of unspecified size on a
>>display (or indeed not a display) of unknown characteristics using an
>>unknown selection of fonts.
>This is black-and-white rhetoric. Yes, if you specify fontsize or
>pagewidth in absolute units (eg: points, inches) then you lose
>portability. But it would be very easy to extend HTML so that
>designers have a high degree of fine control, using only *relative*
>units (eg: xlarge, 25%).
If it's so very easy to extend HTML in this way, why hasn't it been done?
There are more programmers in the Netscape/IE camp than there are in the
so-called purists' camp.
It should be even easier to add <LI SRC=" ">, but that hasn't been done yet
either, in two years of Netscape releases.
You lose creibility when you claim that "something we don't have that I
think is a good idea" would be easy to implement. Netscape hasn't even
gotten beyond allowing more than two fonts on the screen at once, and you
want to suggest that "it's easy" to extend HTML to allow more?
>The hidden cost of segregating layout in a separate document is that
>every style has to be named.
The hidden cost of not putting it into a separate file is that it becomes
very hard to maintain a large set of documents with a common style.
> Good designers won't want to be bothered
>by this, for the very good reason that most of their job is using
>many fine variations on 'emphasis'.
How do you know what Good Designers want to be bothered with? Are you the
spokesperson for the Good Designers Guild?
> So WWWeb-design software would
>have to offer a 'auto-generated symbolic names' option that would
>name styles things like "JHG8478".
Or are you the spokesperson for the Web Software section of the programmer's
Guild? You keep suggesting that your ideas are good, because they are easy
to program, and anyone else's ideas are bad, because they are hard to write
software that implements them. I think you're just blowing hot air.
>>If they are such a fundamental feature of text representation as
>>you'd have us believe, I guess the answer must be very simple and
>>well-known to you.
>This is a fine example of your perfect inability to paraphrase my
>position accurately.
>I think the basic common-denominator of page design is WYSIWYG,
>with accommodations made for screen resolution/size/shape etc.
Then it's not WYSIWYG, and calling it that is misleading. Your position, as
you just stated it, is flawed from the outset.
>Chinese HTML should allow Chinese designers to duplicate the page
>designs of traditional Chinese publishing. I have no idea what
>this involves... and I've a strong suspicion you haven't either.
Well, it involves mumble, mumble, mumble.... which would be easy to add to
the HTML standard, and therefore...
Why does Chinese Web publishing have to follow traditional Chinese
publishing models? They are two different mediums? The Web is not sutied
for emulating paper, it never has been. Nor is paper suited for emulating
the Web. So why all the emphasis on forcing Web design to converge with
paper publishing design? It doesn't make sense.
Chris Gray
In article <4n848d$l...@newsgate.dircon.co.uk>, ste...@foresight.co.uk (Stewart Dean) writes:
> [...] In German the word order conveys
> emphasis - so therefore, as it has been said, content is King.
Slight exaggeration, IMHO - languages ,such as German, which have a rich
grammar allow more freedom of word order compared to languages, such as
English, with more lightweight grammars. That reduces the need for
visual emphasis in printed texts, but may not eliminate it.
Many German printed texts use a form of emphasis ( S p e r r t e x t )
in which the spacing between letters is slightly larger than in normal
text. One might express this in CSS1 by saying
EM { letter-spacing: 0.3em }
for example. Now this brings me to an interesting point: suppose
I am writing about the use of colour and I make frequent quotations
from Goethe's treatise on the subject. These quotations are in German,
because I assume that all serious-minded people can at least read
German, and I'd like them to *look* German. So I wrap them up in
<BQ LANG=DE CLASS=Goethe> ... </BQ>, and in my style sheet I put
.Goethe { font-family : fraktur blackletter }
BQ { text-align: justify ; margin: 1em 3em }
EM.Goethe { letter-spacing: 0.3em } .
Now I ask myself: is that third declaration really a property of the
class Goethe, or does it really relate to the German language? The
main reason I put LANG=DE there was to tell the text rendering engine
to use German hyphenation rules and punctuation conventions rather
than English (or American) ones: it would be rather handy to be able
to let style-sheet directives depend upon the language, rather than
having to duplicate the information in the CLASS. Any thoughts?
Disclaimers: 1) My CSS1 syntax is probably way up the creek.
2) I'm not really advocating the use of 10-pt Olde
Englishe Sheepdogge fonts on VGA screens.
3) Smileys omitted as an exercise for the reader.
Lee S. Bumgarner
Warren Steel (mu...@mail.olemiss.edu) wrote:
> Simon Hargreaves wrote:
> > What exactly is HTML standard if you think that HTML stands still you
> > are sorely mistaken
> I wish you could convince browser makers of this! They have failed
> to implement useful things which are requested here every week:
> Tabs, Banners, Style Sheets, Figures with Captions, <UL PLAIN>,
> <UL SRC= >, <HR SRC= >, which have been around for more than
> a year!
Uh, Style Sheets will be in both Mozilla 4.0 in the fall and MSIE 3.0
out this summer sometime. The rest of the stuff will happen eventually.
-l
---
----> Undertoad<---
http://falcon.jmu.edu/~bumgarls/
"God is a concept / by which we measure our pain." -John Lennon
"Klaatu barada nictow"
Lee S. Bumgarner
> Jorn> Apparently some people have the opposite view, but I think only
> Jorn> people who don't any point to *esthetics*.
> It's hard to parse this nonsentence, but I think you believe somehow
> that appearance of a document's visual representation is something
> which can and should be the responsibility of the document's writer -
> who, presumably must know the details of every reader's screen,
> printer, font system, window size, and colour palette?
> Stewart> In the standardisation of HTML it is usefull to know that
> Stewart> where possible <b> come out bold as a opposed to <strong>
> Stewart> which could, by the nature of the tag, be anything from
> Stewart> larger text, red text or even flashing. Some may say it's
> Stewart> users choise - fine, but it makes the creation of anything
> Stewart> above pages of text a problem and have other knock on
> Stewart> effects.
> What do you mean by "anything above pages of text," Stewart? Are you
> thinking of things that are beyond the remit of HTML, like formatted
> text and graphics? There are languages for such things (unfort-
> unately, they're mostly proprietary), like PostScript, PDF, GIF, and so
> on. Yes, you lose some of the platform-independence which HTML gives
> you (you gave that up anyway, when you decided to use I & B), but you
> keep some of it (eg PostScript is okay if you're only interested in
> bitmapped display systems). The other thing you lose, in larger
> measure, is the ability to make meaningful indexes of your work - but
> you could produce your own index from the higher-level source you use
> to generate your PostScript or whatever.
It's threads like this that make this a great group...now if we could
only split it to make it even BETTER. Anyway, the more Webcentric
software becomes the more important what the standard of HTML is...
Maybe that is why the W3 has gotten off its butt and put forth the
3.2 proposal.
Yura Socolov
> >that appearance of a document's visual representation is something
> >which can and should be the responsibility of the document's writer -
> you see it as a responsibility.
everyone else to see, please, take your time and make it look neatly.
I don't know, when i see an ugly page, i take it as some sort of
disrespect to a viewer... Or as a lack of knowledge, and both are bad,
aren't they?
-- yu
Stan Friesen
In article <s8d9485u...@socrates.ansa.co.uk>, t...@ansa.co.uk (Toby Speight) writes:
|> Jorn> over, WordPerfect's 'RevealCodes' markup was format-oriented,
|> Jorn> but entirely portable. Some machines had to substitute
|> Jorn> non-italics for the 'italic' code, but that's really a very
|> Jorn> simple sort of substitution to do.
|>
|> I'm not familiar with WordPerfect, but I imagine it also had commands
|> for pixel-level sizing of spaces, an so on, which instantly become
|> meaningless once you no longer know how big each letter will be.
It is worse than that. I *have* WP (it is my word processor of choice at home).
The DOS version assumes a standard set of PostScript fonts. The Windows
version uses a combination of TrueType and PS fonts, with translation tables
to render the TT fonts on printers that lack the ability to use them.
The appearance of a document can change *radically* when one changes the
available font set. This can, and does, happen just from changing the
currnetly selected printer in the Print Dialog! I hardly call this
"perfectly portable" for document layout purposes - not when I have to re-
layout the document every time I change printers.
[The Windows version is a little better about this, since it will try to use
bit-level graphics to send the TueType fonts to the printer, meaning the
screen fonts and the printer fonts are more closely related - at the cost
of potentially slower printing].
ca...@ais.net
ca...@ais.net wrote:
>
> Several Problems with your logic:
>
> 1. How many people use mono palmtops for www browsing?
> look at in one particular page. Typographers have been studying
> human responses and psychology to figure out what the human eye
> responds to the easiest. Shouldn't we trust the experts in this
> area?
>
>
> ~Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're NOT after you!~
This is what I said earlier, and have been Flambe ever since, but still,
how many people design their sites for Lynx? (That is what "Text Only"
pages are for.) I agree with whoever said that CSS is the way to go, but
I think that that is a short-term solution.
What is wrong with Typographers and Graphic Designers and whoever else
happens to be around setting your fonts, and laying out your page?
People that write HTML already optimize there screens for 640x480,
because that is what "everybody" uses. Consequently, those with
higher resolution have to "pay the price" of resizing their windows.
So, people are already doing this, although under a different name.
As for the fonts, with the fontpak from Microsloth, everybody can have
the same basic fonts. And with OpenType, The fonts you need will come
with the page.
Also, I don't have a super-computer running at 1600x1200 resolution
(true color, no less) on a 21" screen. I have a Pentium 60 with 256
colors, running at 1024x768.
Thanks.
~I take it back, they really ARE after you!~
Tero Paananen
jo...@MCS.COM (Jorn Barger) writes:
>*Infinitely* fine grain is impossible, yes. But if we *create* future
>versions of HTML wisely, the degree of ***portable fine-grained
>control*** can be maximized at a very high level.
Which is exactly what is being done while still preserving the platform
independence. If you want finer control, use HTML to link to another
media type (Adobe Acrobat for example).
>j
-TPP
J. Kivi Shapiro
In article <319AA6...@ais.net>, <ca...@ais.net> wrote:
>how many people design their sites for Lynx? (That is what "Text Only"
>pages are for.)
Not only. The web indexing robots only do text, for example. I've seen
more than one company who include their own name on their page only as
an image, without alt text: people searching for that company _won't
get_ those pages. Also, there are those who choose not to automatically
load images, because of the increase in speed doing so provides: If one
of them encounters a page that has a million little image icons on it,
with no alt text, why should they load all those images on the chance
there's something worthwhile there?
There's really no dichotomy between text pages and image-laden pages, so
long as people use the alt attribute well. It's such a simple thing.
- Kivi, who recently stopped autoloading images and is surprised at how
much faster everything is
--
ksha...@julian.uwo.ca or ki...@pobox.com (Kivi Shapiro)
HI! I'm a .signature virus! Copy me into yours and join the fun!
Alan J. Flavell
On Wed, 15 May 1996 ca...@ais.net wrote:
> how many people design their sites for Lynx? (That is what "Text Only"
> pages are for.)
Oh, really. It's been repeated often enough, but it seems it
needs saying again:
1. A significant number of users of graphics browsers run them with
image loading off, and only load images when they want them.
2. A significant number of Lynx users can load images via an
excellent graphics helper application (e.g XV). [1]
3. There is usually NO NEED to "design text only pages". HTML is
equipped with adequate means[2] for designing pages so that they work both on
graphical browsers or text mode browsers. There _are_ some reasons why
one might want to design pages in different variants for different classes
of browser[3] but this is not usually one of them.
4. Lynx is not the only text-mode browser.
Notes
[1] VAX/VMS users, for example, cannot run Netscape, but have no problem
running Lynx + XV. That may be a better solution than running a
back-level NCSA X Mosaic that had been ported to VAX/VMS. But this
is only one example.
[2]Yes, IMG with ALT is clumsy in a number of ways. So why haven't
you all been clamouring for the FIG to be implemented this last
two years, when it would demonstrably do the job so much better?
[3] I'm not saying I actually recommend authoring different versions
of a page, except in a few specialised situations (e.g providing
equations as inline GIFs for those browsers that don't support
<MATH>). But it's decision that each author must take for themselves,
based on their perception of the needs of their audience. I write
for an audience that cares about the completeness and accuracy of
the information, and does not ask for it to look like a fairground,
and I set my priorities accordingly...
best regards
ca...@ais.net
> And if my browser
> can't display the intended font the page is no doubt going to look
> horrible because -you- have tied the layout to that particular font.
The fonts come with a new standard called OpenType (standard because it
is being made by Adobe [has standards anyways], Microsoft, and Netscape.
> Lining up things that on my browser don't line up and so on.
> In short, since you can't tell as a designer what printer is going to
> be making a hardcopy of your design there's little point in asserting
> a fine control over it. In many cases it will look garbled. Or worse.
What difference does it make what something on the web looks like when it
is printed, and besides, with OpenType, the fonts will be chosen for the
viewer.
> Why don't *you* trust typographers? Some could be working for the
> company that designed the browser?
I do trust typographers, becasue they know what they are doing. And, with
OpenType, it wouldn't matter what brower company they happen to work for
because all the major browsers (Netscape, Explorer, ?Mosiac?) will
support it (remember, Netscape and Microsloth are actually working
TOGETHER on this).
Thank you.
~Too late, they already got you...~
Alan J. Flavell
On Thu, 16 May 1996 ca...@ais.net wrote:
> What difference does it make what something on the web looks like when it
> is printed
BZZZT! Thank you for playing WWW. Next candidate, please?