Parallel text solutions?

[Andrew]

Hi,

I was hoping for some comment on work I have started with (mostly)
parallel text:

http://www.andrews-corner.org/greek/greek_online.html

I have used two left floated divs, both containg preformatted text to
keep the content parallel at a relatively conservative screen size.
There is however a vertical displacement with a smalerl window. (I
think is perhaps not all that disastrous: both texts are still
presented, I will simply not mark it as 'Parallel Text'

I am a little puzzled as to why I cannot get borders to show on these
floated elements?

Any comments will be gratefully received,

Andrew.

 

[dorayme]

Hi,

I was hoping for some comment on work I have started with (mostly)
parallel text:

http://www.andrews-corner.org/greek/greek_online.html

I have used two left floated divs, both containg preformatted text to
keep the content parallel at a relatively conservative screen size.
There is however a vertical displacement with a smalerl window. (I
think is perhaps not all that disastrous: both texts are still
presented, I will simply not mark it as 'Parallel Text'

I am a little puzzled as to why I cannot get borders to show on these
floated elements?

Any comments will be gratefully received,

This is starting to get it:

#greekverseL {
margin:0;
float: left;
width: 40%;
padding-left: .5em;
padding-right: 1em;
border:1px #ccc solid;
}
pre.greekverseL {
font-size:100%;
font-family: "New Athena Unicode", Gentium, "Palatino Linotype",
"Lucida Grande", Galilee, "Arial Unicode MS", sans-serif;
line-height: 2em;

}

#greekverseR {
margin:0 0 0 50%;
padding-left: .5em;
width: 40%;
}

pre.greekverseR {
font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times,
serif;
line-height: 2em;
}

It looks too complicated for me, your code, I would not use the
pre stuff but maybe you know better...You seem not to actually
set borders. With floats, margins are important. Take a look and
maybe play further.

 

[Andrew]

This is starting to get it:

#greekverseL {
margin:0;
float: left;
width: 40%;
padding-left: .5em;
padding-right: 1em;
border:1px #ccc solid;
}
pre.greekverseL {
font-size:100%;
font-family: "New Athena Unicode", Gentium, "Palatino Linotype",
"Lucida Grande", Galilee, "Arial Unicode MS", sans-serif;
line-height: 2em;

}

#greekverseR {
margin:0 0 0 50%;
padding-left: .5em;
width: 40%;
}

pre.greekverseR {
font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times,
serif;
line-height: 2em;
}

It looks too complicated for me, your code, I would not use the
pre stuff but maybe you know better...You seem not to actually
set borders. With floats, margins are important. Take a look and
maybe play further.

Hi Dorayme,

Thanks again for your suggestions which as always have been very
instructive. I have incorporated (quickly) some of your suggestions
and will look more closely after (my real) work

I have found myself forced towards pre text for verse, it makes
coying / pasting Greek text very easy and preserves the line breaks
for the verse without 100 br per page. The English translation is
treated the same only to be parallel.

Increased line spacing seeks to make the Greek text a little clearer
and easier to read.

Anyway thanks for your ideas!!!!

Andrew

 

[Jukka K. Korpela]

I have found myself forced towards pre text for verse, it makes
coying / pasting Greek text very easy and preserves the line breaks
for the verse without 100 br per page. The English translation is
treated the same only to be parallel.

I wonder why you have rejected the most obvious structural approach, which
would probably remove some of your problems: using a table with two columns,
with one verse as one row. Simple preprocessing should take care of
converting texts into such a format

That way, the columns would take their natural widths in most situations. To
make things work in very narrow windows as well, you could use a little CSS
so that if a table cell's content is divided into two lines, it appears with
some indentation on the second (and any subsequent) line, to indicate
continuation of a verse.

 

[jojo]

I wonder why you have rejected the most obvious structural approach,
which would probably remove some of your problems: using a table with
two columns, with one verse as one row. Simple preprocessing should take
care of converting texts into such a format

I suppose most people here are glad, that Andrew didn't use a table. The
reason: tables are not a layout object, they are for displaying tabular
data. In HTML 4.01 you shouldn't use any element for different purpose
than it's semantic meaning. For layout use CSS.

 

[Alan J. Flavell]

I suppose most people here are glad, that Andrew didn't use a table.
The reason: tables are not a layout object, they are for displaying
tabular data.

Quite so, and a verse and its translation certainly stand in a
relationship which is apt to be presented as tabular data.

In HTML 4.01 you shouldn't use any element for different purpose
than it's semantic meaning. For layout use CSS.

And in English you shouldn't confuse its with it's

Why did you quote that, if you had nothing to say about it?

....herrschaftszeiten...

 

[jojo]

Quite so, and a verse and its translation certainly stand in a
relationship which is apt to be presented as tabular data.

I'm sorry, I overlooked the fact that it is a translation... perhaps the
subject misled me.

And in English you shouldn't confuse its with it's

My apologies.

Why did you quote that, if you had nothing to say about it?

...herrschaftszeiten...

....jetzad reichts amoi! Jo, i woas scho...

Yes, I know, not necessary... my apologies again. The fact is: first I
wanted to say something about it but then I decided otherwise and forgot
to strip out the quote.

 

[Mark Parnell]

Deciding to do something for the good of humanity, jojo

In HTML 4.01 you shouldn't use any element for different purpose
than it's semantic meaning. For layout use CSS.

Do you have any idea who you're replying to? Have a look through the
archives for Jukka's posts and you'll see what I mean...

 

[Andrew]

Quite so, and a verse and its translation certainly stand in a
relationship which is apt to be presented as tabular data.


And in English you shouldn't confuse its with it's


Why did you quote that, if you had nothing to say about it?

...herrschaftszeiten...

Hi Alan,

Thanks for presenting this so clearly. I guess I have been a victim of
table-phobia and I have been constructing increasingly complex CSS to
mimic legitimate table function

Thinking out loud: For a table the title of each text (English /
Greek) would act as column headers with a relationship to the column
below each. The cell with the Greek would have a relationship to the
cell parallel to it in English. A tfoot section would contain
information on both texts + time of placement etc. thead for text
title, tbody for the greek / english.

Thanks for providing some guidance in this matter!

Andrew.

 

[Andrew]

I wonder why you have rejected the most obvious structural approach, which
would probably remove some of your problems: using a table with two columns,
with one verse as one row. Simple preprocessing should take care of
converting texts into such a format

That way, the columns would take their natural widths in most situations. To
make things work in very narrow windows as well, you could use a little CSS
so that if a table cell's content is divided into two lines, it appears with
some indentation on the second (and any subsequent) line, to indicate
continuation of a verse.

Hi Jukka,

It has in fact been pointed out to me that the material that I will
be presenting is in fact legitimate tabular data and I will be taking
your advice and using tables for this particular data. (As I have also
taken advice from your site concerning footnoting without superscript
links.

I have searched for information on indenting the second line without
much success. Do you have a link?

Thanks for your trouble,

Andrew.

 

[Harlan Messinger]

I have searched for information on indenting the second line without
much success. Do you have a link?

You mean, a hanging indentation, like this?

Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought
forth on this continent a new nation, conceived
in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that
all men are created equal.

Use (substituting your choice of indentation size):

padding-left: 2em;
text-indent: -2em;

 

[Andrew]

You mean, a hanging indentation, like this?

Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought
forth on this continent a new nation, conceived
in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that
all men are created equal.

Use (substituting your choice of indentation size):

padding-left: 2em;
text-indent: -2em;

Hi,

That is absolutely ingenious. Thanks!!

Andrew