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CSS Layout Complications
- From: ed nixon <ed dot nixon at lynnparkplace dot org>
- To: docbook-apps at lists dot oasis-open dot org
- Date: Fri, 07 Feb 2003 16:56:53 -0500
- Subject: DOCBOOK-APPS: CSS Layout Complications
- Reply-to: ed dot nixon at lynnparkplace dot org
I've spent the better part of the day on the xHTML output & CSS learning
curve; it feels a bit like a cliff at the moment. :)
It started with the question I posted this AM about removing the
"Abstract" gentext, including the <p class="title"><br/></p> sequence
that results if I customize the Abstract gentext string to null. I'm
still wrestling with that.
The perplexity continued as I discovered that Internet Explorer (which
is the preview display engine in my copy of Homesite) behaves
differently from Mozilla when confronted with empty <div> and <h3> tags.
I was trying to generate xhtml from the xhtml stylesheets using the
'xml' output method and instant saxon 6.5.2.
I made the happy discovery, though still a little foggy of understanding
why, that if I switched the output method from 'xml' to 'html', I still
got transitional xhtml and Internet Explorer would settle down and
behave more or less like Mozilla and as I was expecting it to behave
against the CSS I was developing.
But, I'm still in the woods. It has to do with those empty divs, the
empty h3 for the author information and the horizontal rule inserted by
default after the title. In both Mozilla and IE, these empty elements
are adding top and bottom padding and/or margins that have the effect of
bulking up the vertical height of the page title, the section I would
like to use as a banner title. I'd like to have better control over how
high it is so that I can deal properly with the position of TOC div and
the actual page content in the first class="section" division.
If I run Tidy against the file, of course it will strip out these empty,
space generating elements and all is pretty much well. However, that's a
new, manual and extra step in the workflow that I'd like to avoid if
possible.
I've tried the clean-up and make valid parameters to little effect.
Does this ring any bells with folks on the list?
Have there been solutions developed?
Am I missing the silver bullet that will solve my problems by stripping
the empty layers from my output?
If it's more appropriate to exchange experience off list, that's OK with
me. One way or the other, I'd like to gain some insight and, better
still, get closer to a solution.
Thanks. ...edN