On 2006-04-01 22:38 EST, Benjamin Shine wrote: > > On Apr 1, 2006, at 3:51 PM, Henry Minsky wrote: > >> >> >> It will mean a change from the current way we implement some >> features, such as text font/size/style, since they are presently >> individual attributes of text, not properties of a single style >> attribute. >> >> >> Yeah, what are the implications of changing that. Should we try >> to have some intermediate support for the current mechanism for >> setting font size/style/name directly on a text object and also on >> a style object? We could have a backward compatible API for a while. >> > > I would like to see us develop a model which encourages dealing > with typography as sets of related characteristics. I would be > happy to see the API for setting font characteristics separately go > away. Professional visual design generally uses just a few > combinations of font color/size/weight/family in an entire > document; our model should make it easy to make things look good, > and hard or impossible to make things look bad. > > HTML and Microsoft Word made it too easy to use too many text > effects. I almost always prefer a simple dignified typewritten or > LaTex document to the insanity of freshmen and programmers set > loose with too much typographic freedom. > > One of the Laszlo Systems visual designers, Peter Andrea, posted a > rant on web design awards which is worth reading: > http://laszlomail.com/blog/2006/02/10/state-of-the-art-in-graphic- > design/ > "Each of the sites he has chosen to represent utilizes conventions > in color, layout, typography, and hierarchical structure that are > the centuries-old foundation of print design. For proof, take a > spread from any contemporary magazine, and compare it to the screen > grabs… I would argue that 9 times out of 10, you will find the > printed page to be superior in every respect." > > The ability to set font size/style/name/color directly via separate > API calls is necessary for making a rich text editor, but that's a > little tiny subset of "things we want to do with text."
I think we want to adopt CSS as a way of doing this. Even though it gives the naive designer the same amount of rope you are complaining of. _______________________________________________ Laszlo-dev mailing list Laszlo-dev@openlaszlo.org http://www.openlaszlo.org/mailman/listinfo/laszlo-dev
