lynx-dev
[Top][All Lists]
Advanced

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: [Lynx-dev] how to maximize client area???


From: Chuck Martin
Subject: Re: [Lynx-dev] how to maximize client area???
Date: Sun, 30 Jan 2005 01:06:15 -0500
User-agent: Mutt/1.4i

On Fri, Jan 28, 2005 at 08:45:38PM -0500, address@hidden wrote:
> >> on the left size some blank columns are always present.
> 
> -- comment re hacking source snipped --
> 
> isn't it time to remove this rather burocratic left-over (smile) ?

I wouldn't call it a "burocratic (sic) left-over".  In fact, I find it
highly useful.

For one thing, without those spaces, it's impossible to tell the
difference between an H2 header and a single line paragraph, which
makes it very difficult to scan through the headers in a web page
when searching for something, or when trying to get a rough idea of
a web page's content.

In fact, if you look through the src/DefaultStyle.c file at the number
of spaces in the various structures, you'll find that information very
useful in understanding web pages.

For example, an H1 header is always centered (presumably because it's
usually used for the title of the page).  The rest of the headers are
indented progressively by even numbers of spaces; i.e. H2 headers are
indented zero spaces, H3 headers two spaces, H4 headers four spaces,
etc.  Since normal text is indented by three spaces, which is an odd
number, it will never line up with a header, so it's impossible to
mistake a single-line paragraph for a header.  Blockquotes are indented
five spaces, which is also an odd number, and will therefore also never
line up with a header.  And on and on.

Since Lynx can't have text in varying sizes and fonts to differentiate
these things, I think that the various numbers of spaces used to indent
things can be used, and is used, very effectively, to serve that purpose.

Perhaps these things should be documented somewhere so that users under-
stand why things are as they are.  I certainly don't want the defaults
to change, and if I were to change them for some purpose (such as a
small screen), I would want to change more than the default for normal
text, so that the various parts of a web page would still be distinguish-
able.  You definitely don't want normal text lined up with any of your
headers, for example, so you might want to increase the indents for
each of those by two.  You might also want to indent preformatted text
three spaces to set it apart.

Chuck





reply via email to

[Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread]