Posted by Jukka K. Korpela on 11/14/05 00:15

"Stefan Mueller" <seekware-remove-@yahoo.com> wrote:

> I'd like to write my html code in a structured way.

Fine.

>
> Therefore I don't like to write
> Please click here: (<a href = "next.html">link</a>)
> --> Output: Please click here: (link)

"Output"? HTML is not a programming language.

Anyway, it's indeed bad practice. "Please click here" is foolish for many
reasons, though less foolish outside link text than inside it. Consider what
it looks like on paper, or in a browsing environment without anything to
click with. It also distracts from the context.

> I prefer
> Please click here: (
> <a href = "next.html">
> link
> </a>
> )
> --> Output: Please click here: ( link )

Why would that be better?

It seems that by "structured" you mean "prettyprinted". In that case, the
rules of HTML constitute a limitation. Spaces are significant as separators.

> Does someone know if there's a tag or something like that to tell the
> browser not to add a space?

You are kidding, aren't you?

> PS: This is only a simplified example which shows my problem. My real 'a
> href' has many lines like onMouseover, onMouseout, ...

It's not simple enough. And the onmouseover stuff most probably causes just
annoyance and distractions. But this does not affect the basic problem.

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
Pages about Web authoring: http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/www.html

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