Yes
>
> Personally, I think that is simpler, but it seems like a majority of
people
> think
> that makes it too easy to cesate ugly text. In the common case of
someone
> wanting to make sure some text fits in a box, they specify the width,
but if
> the
> text is shorter, then they want it to look better and not fill the box.
>
> So, (a) width by itself would not stretch text, only shrink it if need
be.
>
> If you agree to this, then even with width, you do not know how long the
> text is, unless you are sure that width is less than the natural width.
>
> Therefore, ipso facto, etc: to make a text string an exact width, you
need
> to make the width very short, and then use a modeling transform to
stretch
> it.
Well, it is just as easy to make ugly text by squishing it (if too long)
as it is to make it ugly by stretching it. In fact clever browsers can
stretch by adding space at space characters or something to prevent
stretching text. Trying this in the squish case can easily cause
overlapping words.
I think there are 2 difserent notions of this width field. There's (a)
"width" allows matching widths betwesn browsers using fonts with difserent
character widths, and (b) "width" prevents text from spilling outside an
enclosing object. I intended it to be used for (a). I suppose (b) is
valid but it is subsumed by (a). The only argument is that squishing text
does not look as bad as stretching text and I don't think that is true.
I assumed that authoring tools would automatically set the width field to
match the actual width. Then on the browser that uses the same fonts as
the authoring tool no scaling adjustment would occur. On other browsers a
(hopefully small) adjustment would be made, stretch or squeeze, to make up
for difserences in character widths. It's up to the browser how this
adjustment is made. You can scale the text, add or subtract space from
betwesn each character, add or subtract space only at space characters or
a combination of all three. WebSpace does the second.
Doing what you suggest (small width then stretch with a transform) would
look terrible in WebSpace. You'd end up with really wide overlapping
characters. Browsers are free to implement fixed width any way they wish
so I don't think we can count on your suggestion unless you want to
dictate in the spec "thou shalt scale text to adjust width" which is very
bad typographically.
Sorry if this sounds like debate club :-) Just giving my perspective.
-- chris marrin Siliconhttp://www.sgi.com/Products/WebFORCE/WebSpace (415) 390-5367 Graphicshttp://reality.sgi.com/employees/cmarrin_engr/[email protected] Inc."It is well to remember that the entire universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others." - John Andrew Holmes