[l2h] problem with vertical alignment of inlined math images

[Peter Morling]

Hi both,

and thx for your answers, agreed this is an error. I've checked it with CSS
position:relative top left and so on....still dosn't work ...so what is left
is absolute positioning..and I absolutely don't wan't that ;)...thanks
again.

Best,
Peter


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ross Moore" <ross at ics.mq.edu.au>
To: "Bruce Miller" <bruce.miller at nist.gov>
Cc: <latex2html at tug.org>
Sent: Thursday, December 11, 2003 7:30 AM
Subject: Re: [l2h] problem with vertical alignment of inlined math images


> Hi Bruce, Peter and others.
>
>
> On Thursday, December 11, 2003, at 01:24  AM, Bruce Miller wrote:
>
> > Peter Morling wrote:
> >> Hi,
> >> there is a problem with the vertical alignment of inlined math images.
> >> In
> >> 'internet explorer' the images is aligned correct according to the
> >> middle of
> >> the text, but when using netscape, mozilla etc. images will be
> >> aligned a
> >> little over the middle of the text alignment.
>
> How the pendulum swings!
>
>
> > Yes; surprisingly (to me) gecko (mozilla & newer netscapes) is getting
> > this wrong.
> >
> > HTML's align='middle' should mean that the center of the image aligns
> > with the baseline of the surrounding text.  l2h generates the image
> > with enough padding on the bottom (or top) so that the middle of the
> > image corresponds
> > to the baseline of the math in it.
>
> Yes.  It used to be that Netscape got this right, and IE aligned
> according to the middle of the surrounding text.
> (as the CSS way, described below).
>
> However, this IE/CSS way *cannot* be correct for inline images, since
>     1.  you don't know the height of the text in advance --- that's under
> the surfer's control;
>     2.  the height varies according to the presence of CAPITAL letters
> and letters with descenders  (g,j,p,q,y);
>     3.  simply resizing the window, forcing text to re-flow, causes the
> relative position of images to shift vertically
>            ---- a quite absurd situation.
>
> It is for these reasons that LaTeX2HTML continues to use the old
> Netscape interpretation of  "align=middle".
> Any other is inherently impossible to predict how things will look.
>
> > However, this attribute has been deprecated in HTML 4: the new prefered
> > way is to use CSS. CSS's vertical-align:middle is slightly different:
> > it says that the middle of the image should align with the middle of
> > the x-height of the surrounding text.
> > [Gecko is treating HTML's align='middle' the same as CSS vertical-
> > align:middle.
> > There's a bug report at
> > http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=192077 On top of that,
> > apparently, some versions of IE are doing right and some wrong! ]
>
> I've noticed that recent versions of Netscape/Mozzilla have changed to
> the old IE/CSS way.
> I'm glad they now realise that this is a bug.
>
> It's amusing to know that IE may have switched to getting it right !
>
>
> >> How do i solve this problem?
> >
> > That's the catch :>
> > The CSS approach is preferable, I think: it generally requires less
> > padding of the image (although it embeds an assumption about x-height!
>
> Precisely.
> If you specify *everything* with CSS, including the fonts and
> font-sizes, and window-widths,
> then you can position images precisely.
>
> But that forces readers to view pages only with a very specific geometry.
> You lose the ability to freely adjust the window size and have all the
> text re-flow to match.
> Also, the reader/surfer loses control of the font-size that is most
> comfortable for themself.
>
>
> > but then images don't really work with variable text sizes anyway); I
> > believe both IE & Gecko based browsers get CSS vertical-align right;
> > and CSS is too useful not to use, anyway.
> >
> > This would require adjusting latex2html's algorithm for boxing up
> > inline math images ---  I'm not too anxious to jump into that code
> > myself, at the moment ---  The rest is easy: replace " align='middle' "
> > with " class='inlinemath' " and add a line to the CSS:
> >  .inlinemath { vertical-align:middle }
>
> It's not clear to me that it is even desirable to do so.
> The HTML code will become more complicated, requiring more attributes
> relating to layout
> rather than to content.
>
> >
> > Or, wait for the mozilla folks to fix it.  From the bugzilla log, it
> > looks like after some initial resistance, they've accepted that it is a
> > bug.
>
>      Agreed; it is a bug in the browser.
>
> >
> >> Best,
> >> Peter
> >> Programmer Peter Morling, University of Southern Denmark
> >> Department of Statistics, Sdr. Boulevard 23A, DK-5000 Odense C
> >> Phone (+45) 6550 3399
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> latex2html mailing list
> >> latex2html at tug.org
> >> http://tug.org/mailman/listinfo/latex2html
> >
>
>
> Thanks Bruce for keeping abreast of the issue.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Ross
>
>
> >
> > -- bruce.miller at nist.gov
> > http://math.nist.gov/~BMiller/
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > latex2html mailing list
> > latex2html at tug.org
> > http://tug.org/mailman/listinfo/latex2html
> >
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------
> Ross
> Moore
> ross at maths.mq.edu.au
> Mathematics Department                                         office:
> E7A-419
> Macquarie University
> tel:  +61 +2 9850 8955
> Sydney, Australia
> fax: +61 +2 9850 8114
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------
>
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