Subject: Re: Headers, footers, and tab stops for formatting
From: WJCarpenter (bill-abisource@carpenter.ORG)
Date: Sat Mar 24 2001 - 11:04:26 CST
paul> Why? It sounds like an interesting abstraction, but off the
paul> cuff I see no practical use.
I see no practical use of arbitrarily restricting headers and footers
just because someone can't think of an immediate use for a particular
general feature. Multiple columns are just one instance of that. I
already said I can't immediately think of a practical use for it, but
I've only thought about it a total of 5 minutes. (Someone said
having tab stops was the same as multiple columns. I don't really see
how. If so, get rid of multiple columns from main body text.)
If as many restrictions as possible are lifted from headers, footers,
fields, footnotes, section titles, etc, etc, we won't have to wish we
had those restrictions lifted when someone does thing of a good use
case. By some point in the future, AbiWord must be able to format an
arbitrary chunk of stuff inside some chunk of real estate. If other
things are not at least conceptually founded on a generalization of
doing that, I don't think we'll ever be out of hell.
-- bill@carpenter.ORG (WJCarpenter) PGP 0x91865119 38 95 1B 69 C9 C6 3D 25 73 46 32 04 69 D6 ED F3
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