In article <3d73d225@news.povray.org> , Xplo Eristotle <xpl### [at] infomagicnet>
wrote:

See, that is the problem in this discussion.  You claim you know what you
are arguing about but in fact it turns out you don't :-(  This causes a lot
of confusion simply because you never actually read the specification you
are defending.  If you had, you would not be making such mistakes.  let me
gives you a few quotes from the HTML 4.0 recommendation:

> If you have a table - even if it's filled with ordinary tabular data -
> it's still layout.

11.1 "To minimize these problems, authors should use style sheets to control
layout rather than tables."

> If you put an image on a web page, where does it go?

This is determined in one part by the structure of the document.  A
paragraph ends and a new one starts.  That is structure.  If the new
paragraph starts and the first this is an image the the image will be part
of that paragraph.  Where does that paragraph go?  Well, that depends on the
layout and it not relevant for the person creating the document.  The user
has selected how he wants his layout.  Now, before you jump to nonsensical
conclusions before reading on, you have to be careful what exactly I am
saying:  I am against layout provided by the page.  It would be absolute
nonsense to prevent users from selecting layout as I detailed before.  users
are allowed as much control over layout as they like, but with the broser
providing defaults.  this is exactly how HTML used to work.  Even nowadays
you can still specify some layout yourslef:  Most browsers allow you to set
defatult standard font sizes and fonts, for example.

> If so, how much room should there be between
> the image and the text? This is all layout.

Yes, how much space is distributed on a page is layout.  I never said it was
not, did I?  My point still is in what why should content depend on the
space between an image and text?  Not at all, the user simply uses whatever
preference he/she likes.  In case you did not notice, you get a very
readable page if you use neither stylesheets nor font tags.  The image will
just be paced reasonably.  So why do you tell me what is layout if you don't
know?

> When you put words on a page, they go in a certain order. That is
> layout. The sentences and paragraphs also go in a certain order. That is
> layout.

See, you do not know the terms.  i replied to Warp about this including a
refernce explaining it.  It is "structure".

> Lines must break somewhere (or not). That is layout. There must
> be space between paragraphs (or not); that is layout.

Yes, but should it matter for the content creator is the space between two
paragraphs is two or twenty pixels?  No, the layout is up the the user
preference (see above).  Browsers could very well have been extended to
allow users to control this easily.  Instead any kind of control was taken
from users and they are now at the mercy of the page designer.  So users
lost control.


    Thorsten


____________________________________________________
Thorsten Froehlich, Duisburg, Germany
e-mail: tho### [at] trfde

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