Re: IMG in PRE? -Reply

Abigail (
Mon, 13 May 1996 23:58:23 +0200 (MET DST)

From: Abigail <>
Message-Id: <>
Subject: Re: IMG in PRE? -Reply
Date: Mon, 13 May 1996 23:58:23 +0200 (MET DST)
In-Reply-To: <> from "Scott E. Preece" at May 13, 96 02:22:40 pm

Scott E. Preece wrote:
++  From: Charles Peyton Taylor <>
++ | 
++ | Since all spaces and letters in a monospaced font
++ | are always the same relative size, formatting works
++ | in <pre>.  Add images, and all is screwed.
++ | 
++ | BTW: why not use <TT> instead of pre?  What is it that
++ | you're looking for in <pre> that you can't do with
++ | <tt>?
++ ---
++ Well, PRE seems to control three separate things:
++ 	1. it sets the font to monospaced
++ 	2. it suppresses autofilling of lines
++ 	3. it preserves whitespace as individual characters
++ TT only controls one of those.  Another mode that would be
++ extremely useful is
++ 	1. proportional type
++ 	2. no autofilling
++ 	3. preserve whitespace as provided (either by keeping
++ 	as individual space characters or by tabbing to the
++ 	indicated depth)
++ In addition to the obvious use for poetry, this would be good for
++ code, for those of us who believe code should be pretty-printed,
++ rather than monospaced.  One can work around (2), by using BR at
++ the end of each line, but (3) seems to be impossible [you can get the
++ effect with incredibly tortuous use of tables as layout devices, but
++ it's not really practical...].

I've always problems in imagining how wide a space is in a
propotional font. For instance, in aligned text (both right and
left) interword space clearly differs from line to line.

++ There are also many instances where including IMG would *not* be
++ a formatting problem (the obvious one being where IMGs always
++ appear at the right of text (including the case of appearing on
++ lines of their own).  

I don't think that should be a reason. If you allow something, it
should work in (almost) all cases, not in some. Generally, it will
not work, as you cannot device independently compare pixels with
character cells.