[pmwiki-users] Some experiments with whitespace indentation

[John Rankin]

On Monday, 17 October 2005 2:40 PM, Patrick R. Michaud <pmichaud at pobox.com> wrote:
<snip class='thankyou'> :)
>> 4. you may wish to consider adjusting p.vspace within lists:
>> # an item
>> 
>>   its continuation
>> 
>> # another item
>> 
>> making the space between an item and its continuation less 
>> than the space between its continuation and another item 
>> would enhance readability.
>
>My basic thought is that most people expect vertical spaces
>between paragraphs to remain the same, regardless of whether
>they're embedded in lists.  But perhaps it can be handled with
>CSS:
>
>   li p.vspace { margin-top:1em; }
>   p.vspace + li { margin-top:1.33em; }
>
OTOH 'most people' aren't (and don't want or need to be) page
layout experts. But an administrator may wish to put in place 
rules which automatically represent the author's intentions in
a readable manner. And if the rules change, then one css change
can raise the quality the entire site.

This is akin to the software using <em> for emphasis instead
of <i> for italic -- it embodies good practice without the 
author having to think or know about it.

>Or if that doesn't work we can see about adding some more tags
>(<div>, <span> or something) to the continuation text to give it 
>some more styling options.

I think it can be achieved with <p> tags around continuation 
paragraphs. My feeling is that one ought to use <div> and <span> 
only as a last resport after other possibilities have been 
exhausted. If the semantics are correctly represented, the
presentation will take care of itself.
>
<snip>
>we need to be more concerned with things like:
>
># an item
> its continuation
># another item
>  its continuation
>
>where an author might be surprised that "its continuation" isn't
>treated as one here.  Perhaps we allow both the length of the
>list markup and the length of markup with spaces to be used as
>the indent levels for a continuation.  Or maybe anything in
>between the two?  

Ideally, anything in between the two. But...

# An item

## A sub item

  A continuation item

Is this A continuation item of An item or A sub item?

This was why I wndered if it should be based on the list markup
length.


-- 
JR
--
John Rankin