[pmwiki-users] A question about skins

Marc Cooper gmane at auxbuss.com
Tue Aug 8 13:34:25 CDT 2006


Kathryn Andersen said...
> On Tue, Aug 08, 2006 at 08:57:02AM +0100, cl at isbd.net wrote:
> > On Tue, Aug 08, 2006 at 02:29:06AM +0200, Clemens Gruber wrote:
> > Maybe some way of setting a text column width inside the 'usable area'
> > of the Wiki would be good, i.e. one would set the maximum line length
> > to around 70 characters and the page generation would auto wrap at
> > that line length at display time.
> 
> Well, one can actually use character-width as a width definition in CSS
> (so you could say "width: 70em") but for some unfathomable reason, most
> of the fixed-width web-pages I've seen all seem to define their widths
> in pixels, which is the least flexible of all...

Try it! As you know, it's hard enough getting two browsers to produce 
remotely similar output - or the same browser on different platforms. 
When you try to rely on ems - and believe me, I'm a typography fan, so I 
think in nothing else - things go proper pear-shaped.

It only takes a pixel - an integer-based attribute - to screw up 
alignments, and ems provide that opportunity.

And another thing: font hinting between platforms differs, which can 
mess things up. Indeed, many folk use verdana, or similar, which don't 
exist by default on a Linux installation.

ems are ubercool for typography, but less than ideal for browser page 
layouts.

And I can talk, as a user of the microtype package in LaTeX :-o

-- 
Best,
Marc





More information about the pmwiki-users mailing list