But even this quality (and I'd discourage usage of
WYSIWYG to describe
it) isn't specific to HTML in that it applies to most markup
languages. LaTeX for instance requires no declaration of page size.
Forgive me for over simplifying the matter.
Print preview.
Different media calls for different displaying. While this may seem
like a disadvantage, markup languages such as HTML actually use this
to their great advantage. By seperating content and style, you can
prepare a document for several media types with minimal redundancy.
I was not ignoring print preview, just pointing out the differences between
how a webpage looks when displayed regularly in a browser, and when it is
printed to paper. I've received many complaints in my time about how great a
page looks in the browser, and how trashy it looks when printed. Even if the
printed copy looks alright, it is frequently "not what I expected" because
the page looks different on different display media.
By putting the style declarations in the print media
stylesheet,
on-screen rendering won't take them into account.
There is going to be an inherent difference between what is printed and what
is displayed in the browser. Authors of wikibooks would probably do well to
use specialized formatting for each so everything looks decent.
(how do you
render a page break on the computer
screen?).
The screen is only one page; so you don't. This is why different media
calls for different stylesheets.
It was a rhetorical question. You cannot sensically render a page break in
the browser, but a printed book will require page breaks. This means that
the formatting and styles for the print version of the book needs to be
different from the in-browser version, even if only though the addition of
page breaks and the like.
I think that
there is alot that we could do straight from the
HTML, if we avoid things that don't work when printed, and if we are
willing to do the work to implement the proper styles for printing.
What, exactly, are the displaying problems that need to be addressed?
A common example is people who use object widths incorrectly. For instance
something large with a fixed width might not fit entirely onto a sheet of
paper. Another issue is using a percentage width while not accounting for
the fact that a sheet of paper is thinner (and in a completely different
orientation) from a 1024x768 display monitor. If you use a small percentage
for an object's width, it will be too small on paper and the contents inside
will look "smooshed". It's not an underlying problem with the software or
the rendering or anything, it's a problem with authors who don't take
printed media into account when they design a page. Because it's author
error, it's not a problem with all books, and I would like to think I've
avoided in when I authored the pages in the [[Circuit Theory]] book.
--Andrew Whitworth
_________________________________________________________________
Make every IM count. Download Messenger and join the im Initiative now.
Its free.
http://im.live.com/messenger/im/home/?source=TAGHM_MAY07