Stretching/compressing line of asterisks

[Headless]

Re: Stretching/compressing line of asterisks

Stan Brown <the_stan_brown @fastmail.fm> wrote:
[color=blue][color=green]
>>The asterisk's are decoration, not content.[/color]
>
>http://www.angryflower.com/worlds.gif[/color]

Pardon?


Headless

[PeterMcC]

Re: Stretching/compressing line of asterisks

Headless wrote:[color=blue]
> Stan Brown <the_stan_brown @fastmail.fm> wrote:
>[color=green][color=darkred]
>>> The asterisk's are decoration, not content.[/color]
>>
>> http://www.angryflower.com/worlds.gif[/color]
>
> Pardon?[/color]

I think it's a comment on the use of the apostrophe in "asterisk's "

--
PeterMcC
If you feel that any of the above is incorrect,
inappropriate or offensive in any way,
please ignore it and accept my apologies.

[Headless]

Re: Stretching/compressing line of asterisks

Headless <invalid_addres s@dna.ie> wrote:
[color=blue]
>spell checker[/color]

Bother, spelling checker ;-)


Headless

[Stan Brown]

Re: Stretching/compressing line of asterisks

In article <jatnhv0m4drds6 0irkhqfbid7mjkp o1ql5@4ax.com> in
comp.infosystem s.www.authoring.stylesheets, Headless
<invalid_addres s@dna.ie> wrote:
"asterisk's " as a plural
[color=blue]
>I beg to differ, but after reading PeterMcC's comment I now understand
>that you were playing online spell checker, sad.[/color]

Are you saying that it is too difficult for you to follow standard
usage of making a plural without an apostrophe? _That's_ sad.

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Cortland County, New York, USA

http://OakRoadSystems.com/

HTML 4.01 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/
validator: http://validator.w3.org/
CSS 2 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/
validator: http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

[Steven Dilley]

Re: Stretching/compressing line of asterisks

"Stan Brown" <the_stan_brown @fastmail.fm> wrote in message
news:MPG.1983aa d098f315b98afd9 @news.odyssey.n et...[color=blue]
> In article <bfcans$bqk$1@b ob.news.rcn.net > in
> comp.infosystem s.www.authoring.stylesheets, Kim Scarborough
> <sluggo@unknown .nu> wrote:[color=green]
> >Well, the only reason this is coming up is because I'm trying to do a
> >reasonably faithful XHTML version of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland[/color][/color]
(being[color=blue][color=green]
> >displeased for various reasons with the versions currently on the web.[/color][/color]
Carroll[color=blue][color=green]
> >used rows of asterisks to indicate transitions at various points,[/color]
>
> Did Carroll use them, or did his printer select them? I rather
> suspect this varies between editions, so you are free to choose
> anything you like.
>
> In my edition /The Annotated Alice/, the first transition I happened
> to see just now was near the end of "It's My Own Invention" and
> looked like this:
>
> * * * * *
> * * * *
> * * * * *
>
> a total of fourteen asterisks in a 5-4-5 arrangement.
>[/color]
In the Modern Library edition (the low-cost solution),
they use large dots instead of asterisks.
The number varies -- sometimes 5-4-5, sometimes 6-5-6.

In Through the Lookinglass, there is a transition every time
she goes from one row of the chess board to another.
In Wonderland, the transitions are pseudo-random: there is one
when she eats the mushroom, and maybe two more that I can see
on a quick scan.

You could find a copy of the original manuscript to count the actual
asterisks (or dots). But it appears that *real* publishers don't
worry about things like this.

My vote: declare it tabular data.

P.S.
"(I haven't gotten to the mouse's tail yet)"
I would have started there. That's the fun part.

--
Steve

[Jukka K. Korpela]

Re: Stretching/compressing line of asterisks

"Steven Dilley" <steven.dilley@ compuware.com> wrote:
[color=blue]
> In Through the Lookinglass, there is a transition every time
> she goes from one row of the chess board to another.
> In Wonderland, the transitions are pseudo-random[/color]

But in any case, the asterisk patterns, or whatever, _mean_ something.
They are not textual content, but they indicate transitions. There's
really only one HTML construct that corresponds to this meaning at all,
namely <hr>, which was originally defined as meaning 'change of topic'
but named after 'horizontal rule' - with an accompanying statement
saying that speech browsers could render it as a pause. It's not
optimal markup of course, but the best we can do, and in non-CSS
browsing situations, it gives _some_ indication of some major division
point.

Thus, the correct CSS question is IMHO: How do I style an <hr> element
so that instead of a horizontal line, a pattern of asterisk symbols (or
something like that) appears?

An obvious (?) approach is to create the symbol pattern as an image and
use something like

hr { display: block;
height: 50px;
width: 100%;
background: url(stars.gif) center center no-repeat;
border: none; }

But there are at least two problems:
1. IE seems to draw a border still. Maybe due to the idiosyncracies of
<hr> implementation.
2. When images are not displayed (including many printing situations),
nothing appears except empty spacing.
However, problem 1 partly solves problem 2, since the bordered box
probably conveys some idea of a major division point. :-)

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

[Michael Stemper]

Re: Stretching/compressing line of asterisks

In article <7vijhvor19hh5d 6vpftkf8ijgr6co pklqh@4ax.com>, Ian Rastall <idrastall@eart hlink.net> writes:[color=blue]
>On Sat, 19 Jul 2003 17:12:31 -0500, Kim Scarborough <sluggo@unknown .nu> wrote:
>[color=green][color=darkred]
>>> http://www.bookstacks.org/carroll/alice/chapters.html[/color]
>>
>>Thanks, but... "what is the use of a book... without pictures"?[/color]
>
>I don't know. Because the pics might be copyrighted?[/color]

Tenniel's pictures are long out of copyright. (You did realize that
sluggo was quoting the first chapter of _Alice in Wonderland_, didn't you?)

--
Michael F. Stemper
#include <Standard_Discl aimer>
Visualize whirled peas!

[Jacqui or (maybe) Pete]

Re: Stretching/compressing line of asterisks

In article <MPG.198a3f7271 dcb1e2989bdd@ne ws.cis.dfn.de>,
lauri@raittila. cjb.net says...[color=blue]
> In article <200307241658.h 6OGw2p10708@mic key.empros.com> , Michael Stemper
> wrote:[color=green][color=darkred]
> > >But, you are doing it on WWW, not for book. And I bet Carrol used
> > >asterisk because her typewriter didn't have any better for that.[/color][/color]
>[color=green]
> > When Lewis Carroll wrote _Alice in Wonderland_ in
> > 1865, *he* did not have a typewriter. The reason that *he* did not have
> > a typewriter is that it was a few years before its invention. (Sholes
> > patented it in 1868.)[/color]
>
> So, makes even more likely that use of asterisk was because there was no
> better? I think that at that time there were no printing machines that
> would have had better, whitout great problems? Not that I know if
> printing machines had asterisk then either.
>[/color]
Certainly - if you look at a good edition of Tristram Shandy (1759)
you'll find all sorts of typographical trickery .