Collected notes on the construction of source-files


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IE7 and Firefox give different (quite different) results for the contents of this box because of an alignment bug in Firefox. The second and fourth lines are the same because a nonwhite character has been included in the s-span that contains the image. The character has been rendered invisible in the fourth line.




The basic elements are:
	element		styles
<body> font-family:comic sans ms <div> (nil) <span> (nil) <xmp>,<pre> font-family:fixedsys <p> text-indent:3% <s> position:absolute;text-decoration:none <b> position:absolute;font-weight:normal <a> position:relative <u> position:relative;text-decoration:none <i> position:relative;visibility:hidden;font-style:normal <em> position relative <img> position:relative;vertical-align:0%

<span> is seldom used here; it simply isn't needed anymore after <s> and <u> have been stolen from the lawyers. All the same, it is convenient to be able to refer to the various kinds of spans as a-, u-, s-, b-, i-, and even em-spans. For these, cascading styles work properly for all but the a-spans. Sometime back in the dark ages of browser science, possibly in the process of fixing some other bug, there appeared the a-span-bug : in a nested set of a-spans, the interior ones don't inherit their parents' styles (they once did). Nested alternations of u- and a-spans do work properly, however, and that can help us to keep track of where we are in fairly complicated nests of spans. Alternations of s- and b-spans can also help. The i-spans are pretty weird, but you just never know when you might need something like that. As for q-spans, don't even think about it! And finally, let's hope we never need an em-span (perhaps with font-style:normal added to what is already there).

The style directives that appear above are the ones that seldom change, if ever, and they are included in the stylesheet, msyms.css. Also included there are quite a few identifiers, loosely organized by what they do. Some of them are