CSS justify question

I have a block of text that's split over two columns. The text is
fully-justified. Since the browser has no way of knowing that the text
is split between two columns, the last line of the first column is not
fully-justified - it is right-justified. This makes it look like the
block of text ends, and another block begins in the next column.

Is there any way to make the last line fully-justified?

Thanks,
Jeremy

re: CSS justify question

Deciding to do something for the good of humanity, Jeremy
<jeremys@uci.edu> declared in comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html:
[color=blue]
> The text is fully-justified.[/color]

Justified text is generally quite difficult to read on screen.

--
Mark Parnell
My Usenet is improved; yours could be too:
http://blinkynet.net/comp/uip5.html

re: CSS justify question

Jeremy <jeremys@uci.edu> scripsit:
[color=blue]
> I have a block of text that's split over two columns. The text is
> fully-justified.[/color]

Stop doing so. Problem solved.
[color=blue]
> Since the browser has no way of knowing that the
> text is split between two columns, the last line of the first column
> is not fully-justified - it is right-justified.[/color]

An interesting problem, but why do you want to create it?
[color=blue]
> This makes it look
> like the block of text ends, and another block begins in the next
> column.[/color]

Right.

By the way, if you think that your question is a CSS question, as you say in
the Subject line, why did you post it here and not in the CSS group
(c.i.w.a.stylesheets)?

On the top of my head, I'd say that there's no way to tell browsers to
justify even the last line, no matter whether you do the justify in HTML
(align="justify") or in CSS (text-align: justify). There might be some
imaginative approach, but why would you try to find it? We know that
justification is generally a poor idea on the Web, except perhaps for small
pieces of text for special reasons.

--
Yucca, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

re: CSS justify question

Jeremy wrote:
[color=blue]
> Is there any way to make the last line fully-justified?[/color]

View it in a browser that chooses to render it that way. Your page has
_suggested_ the rendering to the browser, but the rest is up to that
user's particular choice of tools.

As an aside, I'd lose the multiple columns. They're a nuisance on
screens - hard to read and scrolling a long page is just easier. They
have some uses for print output, but just look how awkward it is to
read multi-column PDFs on-line.

re: CSS justify question

Mark Parnell wrote:[color=blue]
> Deciding to do something for the good of humanity, Jeremy
> <jeremys@uci.edu> declared in comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html:
>[color=green]
>> The text is fully-justified.[/color]
>
> Justified text is generally quite difficult to read on screen.
>[/color]


Unfortunately, it's not my decision. And justified text doesn't have to
be quite difficult to read. The only reason it is so is that browsers
are awful at rendering it. Ever read an academic paper as a PDF? May
have been hard to read, but it was probably more due to the content than
the presentation ;-)

Throw in some hyphenation support (which we'll see come CSS3; there are
already javascript libraries to implement it as well) and
fully-justified text won't be such a big problem.

Thanks for your reply.

Jeremy

re: CSS justify question

Jukka K. Korpela wrote:[color=blue]
> Jeremy <jeremys@uci.edu> scripsit:
>[/color]
<snip>[color=blue]
>
> Stop doing so. Problem solved.
>[/color]

See previous reply. It's not my decision.
[color=blue][color=green]
>> Since the browser has no way of knowing that the
>> text is split between two columns, the last line of the first column
>> is not fully-justified - it is right-justified.[/color]
>[/color]

Again, not my decision.

<snip>
[color=blue]
> By the way, if you think that your question is a CSS question, as you
> say in the Subject line, why did you post it here and not in the CSS
> group (c.i.w.a.stylesheets)?
>[/color]

Unfortunately, my NNTP server doesn't seem to carry that group. Since
it's pretty common for an expert in HTML to be an expert in CSS, I
didn't think it would hurt anyone if I asked here.

Jeremy

re: CSS justify question

Jeremy <jeremys@uci.edu> scripsit:
[color=blue]
> It's not my decision.[/color]

That's what they all say. This is apparently a decision by some people who
don't understand the technical issues of WWW authoring, yet want to decide
on them.
[color=blue][color=green]
>> By the way, if you think that your question is a CSS question, as you
>> say in the Subject line, why did you post it here and not in the CSS
>> group (c.i.w.a.stylesheets)?[/color]
>
> Unfortunately, my NNTP server doesn't seem to carry that group.[/color]

Really? Then ask the newsmaster to order it, or get a decent service
provider.

Besides, even if c.i.w.a.stylesheets did not exist, CSS as such would be
off-topic in this group.

Anyway, _if_ there were an answer to the question, it would be a CSS answer.
In fact, the answer would exist in the CSS 3 Text Effects Module - but
that's just working draft, or a sketch, and essentially unimplemented.

--
Jukka K. Korpela ("Yucca")
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/