Re: lynx-dev indentation (was screen widths)

[Chuck Martin]

On Fri, Apr 23, 1999 at 10:38:01AM -0400, Philip Webb wrote:
> 
> (1) the Lynx indentation scheme is hidden in a source file
>     & appears to be documented nowhere;
>     surely, it should be in Users Guide: could CM fill that gap?

True, it's only documented in the source code, and I found it by
accident when I decided to explore the code one day (which I still
haven't done very extensively).  Perhaps it should be documented, but
I'd rather study it a little more before trying to document it myself.

> (2) when Lynx was first being created,
>     the typical WWW document was generally simpler & largely text:
>     the spread of frames & imagery came later,
>     causing purely textual layout to be side-lined
>     by the vast majority of document authors;
>     this means that <H2> & <PRE> tend to be quite rare these days
>     -- eg in typical Internet newspaper stories --
>     & the first  3  columns are lost without anything useful in return;

I don't believe that's entirely true.  I see <H2> quite often used for
section headings, and I often use those section headings to scan a
document.  If the whole document was no longer offset by those three
spaces, I couldn't tell the difference between a section heading and
a very short paragraph that only takes a single line.  This would make
scanning documents more difficult.  Headings need to stand out, and I
see no other way to do it in a monospace font.  It's really the same way
it's done in man pages, except they use more spaces.

I've recently tried using color style, which I like, but if an author
does something like "<H2><B>Section Heading</B></H2>" the color associated
with <B> will take precedence over the the color associated with <H2>,
so it will never be a useable substitute for my purposes.  Besides that,
it won't help people who don't have color.

> (3) in the continuing absence of style-sheet support,
>     Lynx in practice has to offer a default screen-layout style:
>     how far are lynx-devers in fact satisfied with the current effect?
>     should we consider changing indentation for nested lists (as above)
>     or (my problem) removing the basic  3 column  indentation,
>     which currently applies to everything other than <H2> & <PRE>
>     before the further indentations for other tags?

I would welcome a discussion of the nested list indentation, but as far
as the three space indentation for normal text, I think I've explained
adequately my reasons for preferring that they be kept.

> (4) there is also the R-hand margin, where Lynx loses  6  columns:
>     this is not part of the indentation layout,
>     but a separate stylistic choice from long ago.

I agree it's a stylistic choice, and one which I'd be less inclined to
oppose changing, since it doesn't add information like the 3 spaces at
the left, but I think that the present situation looks more balanced
than if you removed those spaces.  When I write on the computer with
an 80 column screen, I never go all the way to the right edge because
it looks crowded and unprofessional, and I think that was likely the
reason for lynx being set up the way it is.  My vote would be to keep it
as is.

Chuck