The key is that HTML is not a page layout spec.  Even in real
publications tools, there's more than a little difference of
opinion as to what's best to use.  Some take more of a graphic
artist's perspective and choose PageMaker, in which virtually
everything is a graphical element to be placed and formatted
to be visually appealing.  Others are more content or writing
oriented, want a decent layout but mostly don't want that to
get in the way, and they choose FrameMaker.  (Obviously, there
are other choices; if you really don't care about layout, you
choose Word.)

HTML is really a minimal layout control format; it determines
document structure only.  Yes, the browser can even screw up
the clear intention of the structural specification (numbering
a <ul>, for instance), but then that browser should fall out
of use for making a document really confusing or misleading,
or generally useless.  More subtle differences, such as how
much leading follows a paragraph, can be annoying, especially
to a layout oriented person, but could also be annoying to 
readers of the document, since some choices really can subvert
the reading experience (decrease readability).

Lex's recommendation to use PS or PDF is the right one if you
really want to control layout in a web browser, and use your
favorite page layout tool to create it.

Bruce

At 10:05 PM 4/8/98 -0400, Lex Spoon wrote:
>Ted K. writes: 
>
> > One problem with html is that you have no control over horizontal
> > spacing.  Tabs are not supported.  Putting in more than one space
> > character does not influence horizontal spacing.
> > 
> > Other than that, html is a 'universal' printing format.  I've
> > noticed some gif support in the system.  I would like to see us
> > expand this capability to allow any window to dump an image of
> > itself on the disk as a legal html file.  An added benefit is that
> > one can make web pages by 'printing' and moving the files to your
> > web server.
>
>
>I can't resist one of my favorite rants. 
>
>With HTML it's even "worse" than this.  Take any particular tag, and
>you really don't know just how it will render on a random user's
>browser.  For instance, header tags might come out numbered, or
>bold-faced, or enlarged, or centered, or maybe none of the above.
><ul> might number its "unordered" list, and <ol> might use letters
>instead of numbers.  You just don't know.
>
>
>If you *really* wants to control layout, you should use something like
>Postscript or RTF or TeX or Word, systems seriously designed for
>describing the appearance of a document in addition to its textual
>content.
>
>HTML is for *content* markup.
>
>
>Lex
>
>
>
************
Bruce Boyer
Lead Technical Writer
ObjectShare
email: bboyer at objectshare.com
************