Re: html div positioning

[Kristaps Dzonsons <kristaps@bsd.lv>]

> First, thank you for mdocml! I have been searching for a way to get
> the man pages put together into an epub file for offline reading on
> something like a Nook or Kindle.  The ebook readers have very narrow
> screens. man2html just wraps up the man pages in pre tags, which
> doesn't allow the man pages to fit an entire line of text on the
> narrow screen.  mdocml is much closer, and the html displays well
> even down to a 640x480 resolution.  There is still some absolute
> positioning going on in the html output, such as "padding-left:
> 16.00em" on certain div tags.  These add up on some portions of the
> man pages, and produce the following example of a.out(5) on a Nook:
> http://cisx1.uma.maine.edu/~wbackman/photo-1.JPG I'm not sure I can
> override this with the -Ostyle=mycss.css option. Thoughts?
>
> And thank you once again.  A fast and versatile tool.

Will, welcome!  Awesome use of mandoc, by the way...

This is an issue with the browser's rendering of mandoc's heavy-handed 
CSS2.  Basically, the only way I've found that produces ok-looking "Bl 
-tag" output is

   [div margin-left=xx]
     [div margin-right=-xx float=left]
       Left
     [/div]
     [div]
       Right
     [/div]
   [/div]

where "xx" is the width of "Left" (usually given by the -width tag). 
This mark-up handles overruns in the left column more-or-less how they 
appear on a terminal, only without the line-break (I couldn't find a way 
to preserve it exactly).  However, it only works with new browsers, and 
specifically, new browsers that I've tried.

 From mandoc.1:

CAVEATS
      The -Thtml and -Txhtml CSS2 styling used for -mdoc input lists
      does not render properly in older browsers, such as Internet
      Explorer 6 and earlier.

If you can suggest mark-up that works in this situation across more 
browsers, I'll immediately jump on implementing it.  If, however, you've 
any even more awesome ideas, then I'm all ears: -T[x]html isn't burdened 
by "prior art".

This has long since been an open issue, so any suggestions you have are 
very welcome!

Thanks,

Kristaps
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