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Posted by Jukka K. Korpela on 10/01/05 17:27
Jud McCranie <youknowwhat.mccranie@adelphia.net> wrote:
> I should explain what I'm doing.
Yes. And it's generally best to _start_ from the original problem, instead
of assumed solution (which so often turns out to be a dead end, and nobody
can help you in the right direction if he doesn't know where you were
heading to).
> I'm trying to make a program
> generate HTML output for its reports.
Wait a second. In which context? WWW, intranet, or perhaps just one
computer? And what reports?
> They all need fixed-width fonts.
That's almost probably wrong analysis in all contexts. If something "needs"
such things, it's probably a legacy application, so why would it "need"
HTML as a data format?
> Some of the reports range from 75 to 132 characters wide.
(Sounds like a legacy application, originally designed for line printer
output.)
On the web, the minimum line width you can assume is exactly zero.
Even in other contexts, avoid imposing arbitrary limits, even when they
might not exceed the dimensions of your current display in fullscreen mode.
> I
> want the recipient of the HTML file to be able to view the file
> without any horizontal scrolling, and also to have it nearly fill the
> width of the screen, no matter what screen resolution the recipient
> has, etc.
Sounds like you are defining a Mission Impossible for yourself, building a
logical contradiction into the requirements.
Instead of telling what you want, why don't you describe the structure and
purpose of the data?
> I've found out about setting the font size in <P style
> ...>,
Too bad. I hope you can unlearn it.
> (<pre>
> is listed as depreciated, but I don't know what replaces it.)
No, <pre> is not depreciated, and it is not deprecated (two different
things). The width attribute in it is, but that's rather irrelevant, given
the fact that it was vaguely defined (semantically) and was never
implemented in any browser of some general importance.
So what made you think you need to preserve the exact line structure and
spacing of the HTML source in the visual presentation (that's what <pre>
means) _and_ not preserve it?
--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
Pages about Web authoring: http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/www.html
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