[boost] Trial history file; CSS problem

From: Daryle Walker (darylew_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-10-13 00:41:21

[I sent something like this on Saturday, but no one responded.  So I'm
resending in case it got rejected.]

Instead of a mail attachment, the file is now in the Sandbox.  Look under
its "BOOST_ROOT/more/version_history.html" and pretend it's at the same
relative spot in the main CVS.

I'm surprised that a full-blown version history file wasn't added a long
time ago.  I raided the CVS history of the main "index.htm" file for the
details.  Any ancient-timers know the history of 1.11.0 and earlier?

The header looks funny; I was wondering how to replicate the current look by
mutating what's given with CSS.  (I was thinking of the headers seen at
<http://www.mozilla.org>.)

I processed what I wrote through HTML-Tidy, adding indentation and line
wrap.  I kept getting weird spacing with the function descriptions at the
Spirit section of 1.30.1 and the Lambda block-quote at 1.28.0.  I
worked-around the problem by undoing the line-breaks Tidy added at those
points.  After being bewildered for a long while about the weird spacing, I
saw the problem when looking in the CSS file:

CODE
{
    FONT-FAMILY: Courier;
    white-space: pre;
}

This last (non-brace) line says that multiple white-space characters are
_not_ collapsed into a single space.  This lets CODE acts as an in-line
variant of PRE, but it violates what CODE usually does!  I need the default
space-collapsing behavior of CODE.  If no one can give me a justification
for that attribute, I'm going to erase it.

Even if you can justify it, do this instead:

CODE.my_special
{
    FONT-FAMILY: Courier;
    white-space: pre;
}

Then call it like so:

    <p>Blah blah, please <code class="my_special">keep    all  of my
spaces</code> blah blah.</p>

That way people who need the default space-collapsing attribute of CODE
don't get screwed.  (Right now it's optimizing the [IMO] <1% wacky case and
forcing extra work to get the usual semantics [that should take 99+% of the
cases].)

-- 
Daryle Walker
Mac, Internet, and Video Game Junkie
darylew AT hotmail DOT com