At 08:43 PM 1/18/2009 -0500, Bill Brown wrote: >I'm just leading horses to the Kool-Aid...I can't make 'em drink it.
Okay, apparently I didn't explain my questions well enough, it would seem. Once again, on this page... http://css-discuss.incutio.com/?page=DropCaps ...is the following recommended way to do up dropcaps... p:first-letter { font: 2.5em/80% serif; float: left; padding: 0.2ex 0 0 0.2ex; margin: 0; overflow: visible; } Now, like I said, I'm not sure if there's a specific reason for that padding. If I'm confused about that, it's only because so often I've seen replies (to other problems) go by on this list, where the solution has been "Oh, you just have to add some padding, otherwise it won't display correctly in such-and-such a browser" (or whatever similar response. I find it strange that the above recommendation has that padding added, in fact, because to me -- being the nit-picky typographer that I am -- it looks a bit weird, it pushes the dropcap just a teensy little bit over. I could see indenting a first line (for aesthetic reasons), say, 14px or somoething, but to just push it over a mere 0.2ex makes it look more like an error than anything intentional. So is that padding there for a reason? If not, then can that whole line (for the padding) just simply be deleted? On the other hand, if so, then does it have to be 0.2ex, or can it not be changed to indent the first line even more -- or, indeed, even have negative indenting and have the dropcap hanging outside the paragraph, in the margin? That could be cool, too, actually. Similarly, the recommendation of... font: 2.5em/80% serif; ...is given, but I don't know if for some reason those values are the "magic number", arrived at through years of testing and stuff. See, that web page basically says "here's how to do it", but then doesn't say "but you can change the values to whatever you want" -- let alone does it explain what the reasons were for coming up with those values in the first place (or, for example, why padding is part of the recommendation). As usual, pardon my ignorance, but I can only assume that someone here made that page, so surely someone here knows? Thanks again, in advance! Ron :) Woof?... http://www.Psymon.com Ach, du Leni!... http://www.Riefenstahl.org Hmm... http://www.Imaginary-Friend.ca ______________________________________________________________________ css-discuss [cs...@lists.css-discuss.org] http://www.css-discuss.org/mailman/listinfo/css-d List wiki/FAQ -- http://css-discuss.incutio.com/ List policies -- http://css-discuss.org/policies.html Supported by evolt.org -- http://www.evolt.org/help_support_evolt/
