Space between a displayed quotation and its source

[tlvp]

Recurrently I'm in the position of starting a page with a paragraph-long
quotation (flush left) followed by a half-line (flush-right) citing its
source.

I'd like to find a systematic way of ensuring that there is one line of
leading -- a visible vertical separation (of height roughly 1em) -- between
the upper edge of the source-citation half-line and the lower edge of the
quotation proper.

Alas, the best I know how to do anything to that end is either

(i) insert a blank line (via <br>&nbsp;<br>) between quotation and source,
or (ii) start the source on the very next line.

Under (i), I sometimes see two lines of leading, not just one;
under (ii) I sometimes see no line of leading, instead of one.

Cases, as displayed:

(i)(a)
Nikt nie może osiągnąć Wyzwolenia poprzez działanie.
Wyzwolenie osiąga ten, kto wycofał swą jaźń z trzech celów
życiowych. Wyzwolenie przynosi najwyższą błogość”.

(Mahābharāta, Santi Parva, Section CLXVII)

(i)(b)
Nikt nie może osiągnąć Wyzwolenia poprzez działanie.
Wyzwolenie osiąga ten, kto wycofał swą jaźń z trzech
celów życiowych. Wyzwolenie przynosi najwyższą
błogość”.

(Mahābharāta, Santi Parva, Section CLXVII)

(ii)(a)
Nikt nie może osiągnąć Wyzwolenia poprzez działanie.
Wyzwolenie osiąga ten, kto wycofał swą jaźń z trzech celów
życiowych. Wyzwolenie przynosi najwyższą błogość”.
(Mahābharāta, Santi Parva, Section CLXVII)

(ii)(b)
Nikt nie może osiągnąć Wyzwolenia poprzez działanie.
Wyzwolenie osiąga ten, kto wycofał swą jaźń z trzech
celów życiowych. Wyzwolenie przynosi najwyższą
błogość”.
(Mahābharāta, Santi Parva, Section CLXVII)

Any simple strategy that will give a display always resembling the forms
illustrated at (i)(a) and (ii)(b), and never at (i)(b) or (ii)(a)? (I mean
to allow all lines to reflow as necessary to accommodate the visiting
internaut's choice of browser width and font size.) And I won't be finicky
about behavior near case-threshholds :-) .

All possible thanks in advance for useful strategies. Cheers, -- tlvp
--
Avant de repondre, jeter la poubelle, SVP.

[Jukka K. Korpela]

2012-05-23 7:59, tlvp wrote:

> I'd like to find a systematic way of ensuring that there is one line of
> leading -- a visible vertical separation (of height roughly 1em) -- between
> the upper edge of the source-citation half-line and the lower edge of the
> quotation proper.

If I understand you correctly, you would like to have an empty line
between two blocks of text (quotation and source-citation), unless the
last line of the first block is so short that the second block (a
one-liner, at least normally) would fit on that line. That is, the empty
line would be suppressed when it is not needed for visual separation, as
the empty space at the end of the last line of the first block does that
job.

I'm not sure what typography books say about this. I had better not look
this up, since the question is too intriguing to be waived just on the
grounds that you should not want to do such things. :-)

I almost wrote "Can't be done", but see
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/test/quotations.html8

The idea:

Use a <blockquote> element so that the citation is inside it, in <p
class=src align=right>...</p>. This gives a tolerable default (i.e.,
non-CSS) rendering. If people criticize you on "semantic" grounds, for
putting the citation inside <blockquote>, which "should" contain just
the actual quoted text, and for using a "presentational" attribute like
align, then you can say: "OK, give me <credits>, make all browsers honor
it, and I'll use it; meanwhile, I keep using things that work."

Now, in CSS, make the citation an inline element, float it to right, and
forbid line breaks inside it. This will make a browser try to fit it as
a box into the last line of the quoted text, and put it on a new line if
it does not fit. This is not quite what we want, so we put a 1.2em top
padding on it, assuming that we use a line height of 1.2 so that 1.2em
is one line, counting the leading. The padding will then act as the
visual separator.

(I have also set the text justified on my test page. The reason is that
right-aligned text looks odd when relating to text that isn't justified
on both sides. This in turn makes hyphenation rather necessary.
Unfortunately, the CSS way for it is poorly supported - and for some odd
reason, though Firefox has support in general, it fails to have
hyphenation for Polish. But fortunately, the problem can reasonably well
be solved using a JavaScript hyphenator.)

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

[dorayme]

In article <1l4fbtekxvvyp.1...@40tude.net>,

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

> Recurrently I'm in the position of starting a page with a paragraph-long
> quotation (flush left) followed by a half-line (flush-right) citing its
> source.
>
> I'd like to find a systematic way of ensuring that there is one line of
> leading -- a visible vertical separation (of height roughly 1em) -- between
> the upper edge of the source-citation half-line and the lower edge of the
> quotation proper.
>
> Alas, the best I know how to do anything to that end is either
>
> (i) insert a blank line (via <br>&nbsp;<br>) between quotation and source,
> or (ii) start the source on the very next line.
>
> Under (i), I sometimes see two lines of leading, not just one;
> under (ii) I sometimes see no line of leading, instead of one.
>
> Cases, as displayed:
>
> (i)(a)
> Nikt nie może osiągnąć Wyzwolenia poprzez działanie.
> Wyzwolenie osiąga ten, kto wycofał swą jaźń z trzech celów
> życiowych. Wyzwolenie przynosi najwyższą błogość”.
>
> (Mahābharāta, Santi Parva, Section CLXVII)
>

> (i)(b)...

> Any simple strategy that will give a display always resembling the forms
> illustrated at (i)(a)

Tell me all the things that irritate you about:

span {display: block; padding-top: .4em; text-align: right;}

with

<p>(i)(a)<br>

Nikt nie może osiągnąć Wyzwolenia poprzez działanie.
Wyzwolenie osiąga ten, kto wycofał swą jaźń z trzech celów

życiowych. Wyzwolenie przynosi najwyższą błogość”.<br>
<span>(Mahābharāta, Santi Parva, Section CLXVII)</span></p>

If you add

p {max-width: 30em}

to your CSS and use whatever number you like, it will probably be
better. Adjust the em top padding on the span to suit. You can use a
top margin instead, it probably does not matter.

--
dorayme

[tlvp]

On Wed, 23 May 2012 09:27:25 +0300, Jukka K. Korpela wrote:

> 2012-05-23 7:59, tlvp wrote:
>
>> I'd like to find a systematic way of ensuring that there is one line of
>> leading -- a visible vertical separation (of height roughly 1em) -- between
>> the upper edge of the source-citation half-line and the lower edge of the
>> quotation proper.
>
> If I understand you correctly, you would like to have an empty line
> between two blocks of text (quotation and source-citation), unless the
> last line of the first block is so short that the second block (a
> one-liner, at least normally) would fit on that line. That is, the empty
> line would be suppressed when it is not needed for visual separation, as
> the empty space at the end of the last line of the first block does that
> job.

You read my mind quite perfectly, Jukka, thank you!

> I'm not sure what typography books say about this.

I think that it's a recommended "variable leading" technique. Or was, back
when I was doing galley proofing in my youth :-) .

> ... I had better not look

> this up, since the question is too intriguing to be waived just on the
> grounds that you should not want to do such things. :-)

Particularly as one perhaps should indeed want to ... :-) .

> I almost wrote "Can't be done", but see
> http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/test/quotations.html8

That accomplishes what I wanted just as perfectly as I could ever have
wished for -- many many thanks!

> The idea:
>
> Use a <blockquote> element so that the citation is inside it, in <p
> class=src align=right>...</p>. This gives a tolerable default (i.e.,
> non-CSS) rendering. If people criticize you on "semantic" grounds, for
> putting the citation inside <blockquote>, which "should" contain just
> the actual quoted text, and for using a "presentational" attribute like
> align, then you can say: "OK, give me <credits>, make all browsers honor
> it, and I'll use it; meanwhile, I keep using things that work."
>
> Now, in CSS, make the citation an inline element, float it to right, and
> forbid line breaks inside it. This will make a browser try to fit it as
> a box into the last line of the quoted text, and put it on a new line if
> it does not fit. This is not quite what we want, so we put a 1.2em top
> padding on it, assuming that we use a line height of 1.2 so that 1.2em
> is one line, counting the leading. The padding will then act as the
> visual separator.
>
> (I have also set the text justified on my test page. The reason is that

> right-aligned text looks odd when relating to text that isn't justified ...

In fact, in my application(s -- all 143, and soon to be more, of them) the
quoted matter *is* justified -- in the OP I focussed on flush left above
and flush right below because of the limitations of newsgroup ASCII layout.

> ... This in turn makes hyphenation rather necessary.

Actually, in the pages this could be to use with, the lines in the quoted
material are long enough that hyphenation is not nearly so necessary as it
might be for the much shorter lines of text in a Kindle-for-iPod book ...

> Unfortunately, the CSS way for it is poorly supported - and for some odd
> reason, though Firefox has support in general, it fails to have
> hyphenation for Polish. But fortunately, the problem can reasonably well
> be solved using a JavaScript hyphenator.)

... so I'd likely eliminate the hyphenator -- just another thing to go
wrong, after all :-) .

What a marvelously simple and effective approach, Jukka. Thank you again!

[tlvp]

Actually, I think nothing at all irritates me with that approach, if I
understand it correctly as essentially the approach that, independently,
guided Jukka's suggestioneering, which does just about exactly what I want.

Thanks for giving it the thought you did :-) . And cheers, -- tlvp