Re: Line spacing not working

In article <_zvHm.34668$>,
"Jukka K. Korpela" <> wrote:

> dorayme wrote:
>
> >> [thinking] of initial values as coming from a fictitious sheet...
>
....
>
> > My motive is to get away from
> > such a variable as "normal", to cash its value!
>
> It is not a variable and it is not replaceable by any other value, within
> CSS.
>

I might have better said "the practical, and also theoretical, situation
is that the meaning of normal varies, within one browser, depending on
font, and maybe even other factors". (Though it is not quite the meaning
but the reference that varies - normal means normal, what normal comes
down to in particular cases varies from case to case). I had misgivings
typing the above. In fact, overnight, I came to the conclusion I better
put this fiction of mine to one side, it has (nearly) served a purpose
of winkling out a few things I was not really clear about. Your remarks
and those of Ben C's have been truly helpful.

>
> The fiction is worse than useless since it has misled you.
>

This is not quite true. It is rather the other way around, I was puzzled
by how browsers work in some relevant details and my fiction perhaps
reflected this rather than caused it. Actually I thought I could bypass
darkly understood matters by it! You see, we Australians are bold and
dashing and will give anything a go, even foolish fictions. <g>

> > The master sheet will be different for every browser but not that
> > different. Although you and he might not know it, when JK says words
> > to the effect that line-height is set too small..., this in effect
> > means that in most browsers, the master sheet is giving too much
> > below 1.3 to be comfortable with some popular fonts.
>
> No, the bottom line is that the value normal is, on many browsers for many
> fonts, too small for normal use of the font, especially when line length is
> large. And by browser defaults, lines extend from the left of the browser
> window to its right, with small margins.
>

OK. I *was* imagining that for every particular user's browser in any
particular browsing situation, it is *as if* there is a detailed CSS
sheet that is the net effect of initial values, browser's style sheet,
and browser idiosyncrasies. So, if an author recommends a font-face for
an element, but does not supply a line-height, the browser (with or
without assistance from its default sheets will).

....
>...If
> you set line-height so that it suits the default font face and family you
> have set (in browser settings or in a user style sheet), it will also be
> applied when the font is something different. This would not create a
> problem if authors always set line-height when they set font, but we know
> they don't, and this discussion has contained opinions saying that they even
> shouldn't!
>
The opinion was an ad hominem one in context of OP, rather than a
technical point. Better not to set any line-height if you don't have at
last some reasonable level of understanding of the effects of doing so.

....

>
> The "initial value" concept is simple enough and needs no clarification, but
> it may need a motivation, a description of _why_ initial values need to be
> set.
>

Simple enough distinction in a way. How browsers decide what is normal
line height is also a curious matter. I understand from what Ben is
saying, and it certainly sounds right when I think about it (even a
graphics program like Illustrator has a normal (it gives you a scale
from 0 to up or down to adjust), that the browser is reading the font
files where there is stored some such information. I was not sure how
all this worked, I thought maybe the browsers deduced a line-height from
various other not exactly line-height info. I still have no exact idea.

....

> >> To me this sounds like the master CSS sheet contains the initial
> >> values.
> >
> > Yes, indeed, that is the idea.
>
> No, that's not the idea at all.

Depends on what idea we are talking about! Ben was just going along for
a little ride (politely perhaps, perhaps to humour me, perhaps to see if
anything comes out of it, not to smother ideas at birth too hastily...)

> The idea is that the initial values exist
> outside all style sheets and never participate the cascade (remember the
> most misunderstood of all CSS concepts?) except in the sense that when
> absolutely no style sheet assigns a value to a property of an element, the
> initial value is applied.
>
Yes, fine. I was just imagining that the browser was acting *as if*
there was a CSS rule at the top of the cascade for each particular
browsing situation. I think I am soon to give up my virtual sheet (and
return all the donations with return addresses that have flooded in for
it, those with none will be used to celebrate at a sort of wake for it
at the pub. You are all invited!).

> > For example, if you wake up in the middle of the night in a bad
> > sweat thinking your browser makes child divs of divs inline, you can
> > easily test that this is not so by
> >
> > div div {display: block}
> >
> > and seeing if anything at all changes on the pages you might have had
> > in mind as examples.
>
> And then you get shocked when you detect that a div inside a div is inline
> when the outer div is inside a table. Well, it isn't, but the risk for that,
> however miniscule, is surely much greater than getting simple nested divs
> wrong.
>

The experimental side of science is fraught with surprises, one can only
have a theory and see how it holds up.

> This, however, has nothing to do with initial values (which you seem to be
> trying to discuss).
>
> > So what do you make of FF showing a line-height of a mere 1 times font
> > size when "Browser Default Style' is turned off?
>
> Beats me. Maybe I'll take a look and give the issue some consideration.


I would appreciate it.

> My
> bet is that there's a misunderstanding. You seem to be implying that such a
> setting would set all properties to their initial values. It is easy to see
> that this does not happen. Headings still have large font size and margins,
> <i> still causes italics, etc. Why would you thus assume that this browser
> function, which has no adequate documentation published, would show the
> effect of line-height: normal, especially if you think it always means "mere
> 1 times font size" in this browser. That would be rather abnormal
> implementation of normal.
>

I tried to investigate this further without relying on the web developer
tools. For example, I renamed and for good measure moved a file called
html.css that comes in the package for FF (there are quite a few
surprises in this package, many many supporting files) and restarted FF.
But the app behaved weirdly and quit. Not sure why? Perhaps the browser
is really partly as I theorised earlier, something with no full life of
its own, needing *a CSS sheet* as well as other things.

--
dorayme

dorayme

In article <lPiKm.38039$>,
"Jukka K. Korpela" <> wrote:

> dorayme wrote:
>
> >>> So what do you make of FF showing a line-height of a mere 1 times
> >>> font size when "Browser Default Style' is turned off?
> >>
....
>
> Using Firefox with Web Developer Extension (that's what you mean, right?),
> on can switch off style sheets individually. One of them is called "browser
> style sheet", and it's fair to expect it to correspond to the CSS concept of
> browser's default style sheet. Our expectations might be wrong, but they are
> justified.
>
> What happens on Firefox when I switch off all style sheets, including
> "browser style sheet", that way is that line height indeed becomes awfully
> small. It's apparently 1 or rather close. Now does this mean that normal
> means 1 to Firefox? Hardly.
>
I guess not if we think of FF as what it ships and operates with
normally but sans author styles. What it operates with in terms of style
sheets or other linked documents is not exactly transparent: I was
poking about in the package it comes in and saw various things (like
html.css) which it may use under some conditions but my foolish
experiments were unreliable for reasons possibly unrelated to their
foolishness.


> When I look at the rendering of a completely unstyled document, I still see
> line breaks (though no vertical spacing) around headings and paragraphs,
> heading elements bolded, links with underline etc. There is nothing in the
> initial values that explains this. For example, the initial value for
> display is inline for all elements.
>
> So what I see really something that the browser does outside the scope of
> CSS, logically speaking at least.

> (It may well have some hidden styles
> anyway.) If you switch off all style sheets for an HTML document, you're
> effectively switching off CSS for it, i.e. whatever you see does not say
> anything about CSS implementation, in principle at least.

It is at least *as if* the browser has a default default sheet that
reduces all elements to font-size: normal and line-height of 1, a
privileged sheet that does not get turned off by pressing the Browser
Default Styles under the CSS/Disable Style menu in the web developer
extension we are talking about. Pressing Disable All Styles makes no
difference if there are no author styles, so it seems disabling author
styles is its main (and very useful) function. It is simply a bit
obscure what it is doing when it claims to Disable Browser Default
Styles.

>
> Moreover, I don't rely on this feature of Web Developer Extension. It does
> not work reliably. Switching off "browser style sheet" apparently switches
> off other things as well (e.g., heading font size settings vanish, even
> though I make them in my own stylesheet, which I do not switch off).

I agree.

--
dorayme

dorayme

In article <lPiKm.38039$>,
"Jukka K. Korpela" <> wrote:

> dorayme wrote:
>
> >>> So what do you make of FF showing a line-height of a mere 1 times
> >>> font size when "Browser Default Style' is turned off?

I have since asked the web developer extension maker, Chris Pederick
about this menu item. As I understand from his replies, it is a trigger
to implement a reset style sheet of his, a sheet a bit similar to the
one at

<http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/css/reset/>

The idea being, as I understand it, to alert the author to provide for
the styles that are being reset, the goal, I think, being to gain
greater consistency across browsers. The actual sheet he uses and the
exchange between us should be able to be seen by anyone at:

<http://chrispederick.com/forums/>

And look under General.

I am reminded of the those of us who set their browser default
backgrounds in Options or Preferences to some ghastly colour to remind
themselves to set background colours. It is a general ploy to alert the
author.

--
dorayme

dorayme

dorayme wrote:

>>>>> So what do you make of FF showing a line-height of a mere 1 times
>>>>> font size when "Browser Default Style' is turned off?
>
> I have since asked the web developer extension maker, Chris Pederick
> about this menu item. As I understand from his replies, it is a
> trigger to implement a reset style sheet of his, a sheet a bit
> similar to the one at
>
> <http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/css/reset/>

That surely explains why line-height appears to be 1.

As a whole, the menu item has nothing to do with switching off browser style
sheet. Instead, it adds a particular style sheet, presumably reflecting
someone's idea of "neutral" (I'd say "dull") style.

> The idea being, as I understand it, to alert the author to provide for
> the styles that are being reset,

This whole "reset" idea is odd. Why do they call it "reset" when they add a
style sheet that sets some properties for some elements to initial values
and some other to values they just made up, like line-height: 1? What's the
point of preventing browsers from rendering <ins> the way modern browsers do
and explicitly urge them to use their default for <del>?

> the goal, I think, being to gain
> greater consistency across browsers.

I don't see a goal, just some play with CSS.

> The actual sheet he uses and the
> exchange between us should be able to be seen by anyone at:
>
> <http://chrispederick.com/forums/>
>
> And look under General.

Ummm... I'm not _that_ interested in the specifics that would dive into a
discussion forum.

A real "reset" style sheet would set all properties for all elements to
their initial values, to the extent they have been defined in CSS specs.
Then you would have to do all the styling from more or less scratch, in the
hope of creating browser-independent rendering. It wouldn't be a complete
success though, because not all aspects of rendering are describable in CSS
as currently defined and because of CSS Caveats.

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

Jukka K. Korpela

In article <dOvLm.39895$>,
"Jukka K. Korpela" <> wrote:

> dorayme wrote:
>
> >>>>> So what do you make of FF showing a line-height of a mere 1 times
> >>>>> font size when "Browser Default Style' is turned off?
> >
> > I have since asked the web developer extension maker, Chris Pederick
> > about this menu item. As I understand from his replies, it is a
> > trigger to implement a reset style sheet of his, a sheet a bit
> > similar to the one at
> >
> > <http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/css/reset/>
>
> That surely explains why line-height appears to be 1.

Well, what specifically explains it is it that Pederick *does* use
line-height: 1 in:

body, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, li, ol, p, ul
{
font-size: 1em;
line-height: 1.0;
}

The actual reset sheet he uses I did not quote to save space here but it
can be seen in the other URL I gave.

>
> As a whole, the menu item has nothing to do with switching off browser style
> sheet. Instead, it adds a particular style sheet, presumably reflecting
> someone's idea of "neutral" (I'd say "dull") style.
>

Yes, OK but "switching off" is just an expression. It is not meant to be
nice, it is meant to alert the author to provide for certain styles so
that the different browsers do not insert their own and rather different
or slightly different ones. At least that is how I read the matter. Yes,
he seems to be just selecting some things he thinks particularly
important.

> > The idea being, as I understand it, to alert the author to provide for
> > the styles that are being reset,
>
> This whole "reset" idea is odd. Why do they call it "reset" when they add a
> style sheet that sets some properties for some elements to initial values
> and some other to values they just made up, like line-height: 1? What's the
> point of preventing browsers from rendering <ins> the way modern browsers do
> and explicitly urge them to use their default for <del>?
>

Well, as I said above. On the analogy, as I understand it, of the
usefulness of setting browser background preferences/options to
something that tends to make one sick... as a reminder to set
backgrounds for key elements especially when setting color. I am not
arguing with anyone on this, I am just discussing this.

Harlan, please stand by with that analogy notebook you keep in case no
one understands my analogy. (If necessary do not flinch to put your own
name down if you don't! <g>)

So, what happens is this. An author makes a CSS sheet, conscientiously
he puts in whatever he feels helps browser consistency. Let's leave out
the specifics for now. He then turns on this Web Developer 'Disable
Browser Styles' menu to see if he has left anything that he might not
want to leave out. The Disable Browser Styles does not turn off author
styles.

>
> > the goal, I think, being to gain
> > greater consistency across browsers.
>
> I don't see a goal, just some play with CSS.
>

Well, I see a goal and it does not appear unintelligent to me. That does
not mean I would rush to embrace it (truth is, I don't really care if my
web pages look a bit different in different browsers, the differences
never seem important enough to me. But that is just me maybe. I am fussy
about a few things, but perhaps differ from others in what to worry
about. Perhaps we are all a bit like this? But there do seem to be
rather a lot of people who *do worry* about browser inconsistencies
(and, to echo a point Harlan made in a thread about yahoo reset, I don't
mean the bugs and straight out incorrect rendering of some browsers)

> > The actual sheet he uses and the
> > exchange between us should be able to be seen by anyone at:
> >
> > <http://chrispederick.com/forums/>
> >
> > And look under General.
>
> Ummm... I'm not _that_ interested in the specifics that would dive into a
> discussion forum.
>
There is nothing to dive into. I asked a question, he answered simply
and I thanked him, that was almost all there was to it. Plus, you can
see the actual sheet he uses.

> A real "reset" style sheet would set all properties for all elements to
> their initial values, to the extent they have been defined in CSS specs.
> Then you would have to do all the styling from more or less scratch, in the
> hope of creating browser-independent rendering. It wouldn't be a complete
> success though, because not all aspects of rendering are describable in CSS
> as currently defined and because of CSS Caveats.

Well, there is doing something good enough and doing it to perfection. A
watch, for example, is a better watch for not varying randomly by a
minute a day. But is hardly any better for most of us for varying
randomly by a second a day (rather than not at all).

--
dorayme

dorayme