> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Brent Eades
> Sent: Wednesday, October 21, 1998 7:55 AM
> > http://www.hellofriday.com
> First (and this is a bit of a pet peeve I guess), I vehemently oppose the
> use of centred alignment for body text, because it harms readability.
I disagree. What is sometimes called "Bell justification" can be very
easy to read. In fact, research in the area, admittedly done several
decades ago and only vaguely remembered, has shown it to be among the
most readable of formats. Of course it has to be done correctly:
narrow columns, no leading, good hyphenation, widow elimination, etc.
It's readable because the eye tracks down the center of the column with
minimum angles to either side.
> Especially on the Web, where different browsers and resolutions produce
> different line breaks, often in places where you really don't want them.
True of all kinds of justification, nicht wahr?
> In my browser, ..., the intro paragraph displays like this:
>
> is a weekly casual commentary by Eric Rhoads. It is
> done
> out of love of the written word, and to express his
> thoughts
> on a variety of subjects.
Sure, that's bad, but the problem is that the author put BR tags
in the HTML, after "done" and "thoughts." If he had left well enough
alone, it would have been better. He needs to restrict column width
to 30-40 characters, and of course there aren't any browsers of which
I am aware that even attempt hyphenation. (I wrote a very nice
hyphenator in PL/I for the Hypertext system in about 1969, but can't
seem to find the source code.)
> (... zillions of Web pages do center all their text; ...)
Yeah, but they do it badly. Way too wide, or if they do keep
it narrow they do multiple columns with column breaks that make
it necessary to scroll down to the bottom, then back up to see
the top of the next column, etc. Horrible. It is possible to do
readable Bell justification in HTML, with maybe some JavaScript
to support continuous scrolling with the rate determined by
mouse position, but it's really only worthwhile if you have
several thousand words of text to be read.
Bob Munck
Mill Creek Systems LC
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