OT: HTML and email styles (was Re: Detecting End-of-File using READLINE command)

[Fairlight]

With neither thought nor caution, Bill Campbell blurted:
> 
> Most of the stuff removed has to do with fixing fonts, and trying to make
> the web page look like it does on the designer's screen (e.g. putting <br>
> at the end of lines of a paragraph instead of letting it wrap properly).  I
> have yet to find a web editing program other than vi/vim that doesn't
> insert font information in the output.  The only appropriate font
> specifications in HTML are relative changes such as font="+2" where one
> might want to emphasise a section.

There used to be a lot of XML stuff in there that wasn't actually needed,
before XML really took off.  FrontPage is a complete litterbug on the
client -and- server sides (it creates 0666 files in the DocumentRoot, need
I say more?).

> One of the original design criteria for HTML was that it be adaptable by
> the user's browser to fit their screen and preferences.  One of the things
> I hate is to come on pages where they've got paragraphs that don't wrap
> appropriately when I increase the zoom on my browser.

Agreed.  I'm reading an e-Book from WebScriptions right now, and they
distribute in 5 different formats (PDF not being among them).  I opted for
HTML over the RTF format.  The others I don't have viewers for.  The HTML
was nicely done, they have the ability to switch back and forth between
framed/non-framed, the fonts scale all the way up and down, and it's got
some neat features for navigation in framed mode, although I'm using it in
non-framed mode because keyboard-only navigation is easier without frames.

The drift away from the HTML design spec in regards to user prefs as
opposed to design prefs is driven by the same force that makes some
"designers" seem to think it's acceptable to write a whole site -only- in
Flash.  Nothing will make me leave a site faster.  It's not the size, since
I now have DSL.  It's partly the CPU horsepower--it's slow on this machine.
It's also the fact that I still do 95% of web browsing in lynx, and if you
can't even get a -partially- readable page in text-only, I figure it's
basically a glam-over-substance site and not worth even bothering to look
at graphically.

And I -hate-...no, that's too light...I -***===HATE===***- opening a site
at 3am in the morning when I haven't adjusted my speakers downward from
"normal" people's hours, and having some stupid Flash presentation start
-blaring- sound and music at me at volumes higher than pretty much any
other audio file I have around here.  It's really jarring to get that in
general, but neighbors tend to get cheesed off.  I've started previewing
sites in lynx--if it's going to be Flash-only, I at least know to plan for
it.

But it's really a pandemic case of the industry putting designers ahead of
users.  Bill Vermillion forwarded me an article with seven deadly sins of
design, and that was one of them--doing things because they're "neat", even
if they inconvenience the user, or the user doesn't want them.

> I have similar problems with plain text e-mail where the writer's MUA has a
> wide screen, and it generates a bad case of long/shortitis when viewed in
> my 80x25 mutt window.  At least with plain text, I can pipe these through
> the ``fmt'' program to clean up the message so it's readable.

I just hate the M$ (and Motif's textarea widgets do it too) standard of a
single ^M as the paragraph break rather than a newline or \r\n, or even
\n\r in the Mac world.  You get these damned run-on lines that comprise an
entire paragraph.  One of the coolest things JPR ever did was introduce me
to par--second coolest to introducing me to mutt.  :)  But really, I hate
that in HTML form input as well.  It's -highly- annoying.

And ever need to look at someone's HTML source, fire up your browser, load
the page, hit View Source, and you get these lines that go on like nine
miles side to side?  I tend to spontaneously combust when I see that.

Oh, and I was looking somewhere the other day and saw there is a Windows
port of mutt now that -doesn't- need Cygwin.  

mark->
-- 
Bring the web-enabling power of OneGate to -your- filePro applications today!

Try the live filePro-based, OneGate-enabled demo at the following URL:
               http://www2.onnik.com/~fairlite/flfssindex.html