[pmwiki-users] formatting, indent

[John Rankin]

On Tuesday, 7 February 2006 5:06 PM, H. Fox <haganfox at users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
>On 07 Feb 2006 13:47:00 +1300, John Rankin <john.rankin at affinity.co.nz> wrote:
>> Just an observation...
>>
>> I'm not clear why a markup is needed to "indent the first line
>> of this paragraph". Arguably, this is a presentation decision
>> best left to the administrator to set in a css.
>
>That's a good point.  I'd still like to be able to use the book-like
>paragraph markup, as an author, for specific purposes -- quoting from
>a book, for example.

Right; perhaps:

>>book<<
Bork bork bork bork... bork.

Bork bork bork bork... bork.

Bork bork bork bork... bork.
>><<

>
>> A common print
>> convention is to indent the first line of a paragraph if it
>> follows another paragraph. But one doesn't normally indent the
>> first line if it follows a heading, a list or some other flow
>> break. As Hagan says, one might also want to set $HTMLVSpace =
>> ''; -- AFAIK common practice is not to combine spacing with
>> indenting.
>
>Maybe that could be possible with something like
>
>    Bork bork bork bork... bork.
>    <>Borkbork bork... bork.
>    <>Bork bork bork.
>
>resulting in
>
>     Bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork
>     bork bork.  Bork bork bork bork bork bork-bork bork bork bork
>     bork?  bork bork bork bork bork bork.
>         Borkbork bork bork bork.  Bork bork bork bork bork bork bork
>     bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork bork. bork.
>         Borkbork bork bork.

That's a very interesting idea. Some xml dtd specifications
include the idea of a "multiparagraph" -- one logical (semantic) 
block that consists of several paragraphs. What about

   Bork bork bork bork... bork.
   +Borkbork bork... bork.
   +Bork bork bork.

Does one ever want to start a line with a + sign? Patrick's
suggestion of > at the start of a line is a bit scary for me
too!

I'm trying to think of when one might use this...
>
>> If it relies on markup to achieve first line indentation, what
>> is the reader to make of a paragraph which isn't indented, or
>> a long page with some paragraphs having the firt line indented
>> but not others? If there are multiple authors, how will the
>> indenting convention for the site be communicated and
>monitored?
>
>By looking at the markup, I think.  (I may not be
>understanding...)

I think it would need a StyleGuide page that sets out the site's
conventions. 
>
>> I guess I'm suggesting that sites wanting this might like to
>> consider setting a site or group-wide css rule, rather than
>> adding a markup rule. I question whether it's pmwiki's job to
>> produce output that's "just like in books" -- that's the job
>> of a site-specific css. PmWiki already produces output that
>> contains all the semantics necessary to format the site any
>> way one chooses.
>
>To expand on that thought, maybe some sites would want one
>presentation style for the web and another for printing (or PDF output
> ;-)  ).  From the older thread about this:
>
>: On 7/25/05, Patrick R. Michaud <pmichaud at pobox.com> wrote:
>: > Just to expand on this; it might be possible to use a separate
>: > print-media stylesheet to provide the different indentation style
>: > for printed output as opposed to on-screen output.  Probably something
>: > on the order of:
>: >
>: >    p.vspace { margin:0px; }
>: >    p { text-indent:40px; }
>: >
>: > which will eliminate blank lines and cause all paragraphs to
>: > have their first lines indented.

Definitely! Although as discussed above I might make the second
rule (I think):

    p.vspace p { text-indent:40px; }

so that only a p following a p.vspace is indented. In fact, I
suspect that this won't have quite the desired effect, eg

...</ol><p.vspace></p><p>...


>
>> The rule would be "if a p follows a p, indent the first line".
>>
>> Just my 0.05¢ on the subject.
>
>Wow, you can still get a lot for a nickel these days.  :-)

Huh, it's about to be discontinued here -- the smallest coin will
be 0.10¢.
>
>My point here is: probably both should be available.  That is, both
>administrators and authors should be able to choose to apply
>the book-like style.

Yes, I think the distinction is between "we want the site to use
a book-like style" (best done in an external css, possibly just
for the Print action) and "I want just this block to use a
book-like style" (probably best done with a >>book<< style).


-- 
JR
--
John Rankin