Gavin, What evidence do you have to show that the way the Cantos appear on the page reflects Pound's intentions, and is not merely a compromise he was willing to make given the nature of the publishing industry? (You may want to read or reread _ABC of Reading_.) One could make valid aesthetic arguments for or against a long unbroken line; one must take care not to raise mere publishing convention to the level of aesthetic authority. Calling me a philistine for raising the issue doesn't advance the discussion or support your position. Tim Romano At 03:26 AM 9/26/01 -0700, Gavin Francis wrote: >And while we're at it why not clean up some of those smerary lines in some of >Matisse's intaglii, soften some of those sharp corners in Picasso and Braque, >and best of all, get rid of some of those pesky Chinese ideograms in the >Cantos >that nobody can understand anyway--because let's face it--there's just nothing >like a good solid rectangular block of nice, tightly kerned good old >Times-Roman. I'm certain that's what Pound had in mind. > >And you're right--you should let sleeping logs die--you posited this same >argument a year or so ago. And people who still use Tex are still blockheads. > >Gavin > >Tim Romano wrote: > > > Tim, > > Any reason why you eschewed CSS? One could wrap each line-segment in a > > <div> and specify the indentations in style, using custom classes: > > > > .in1 { > > text-indent: 6em; > > } > > > > .in2 { > > text-indent: 9em; > > } > > > > That would get rid of the phalanx of non-breaking spaces. > > > > On a literary note: I'm not yet convinced that the indentations are > > actually called for. They seem to be Pound's concession to the original > > typesetters, given the narrowness of the page he could reasonably expect a > > publisher to offer, a concession that he might not have made had the page > > widths been more ample. Inasmuch as the HTML "page" is like an opened book > > that has no binding crease, HTML offers twice the page-width, in a manner > > of speaking. Under modern circumstances, Pound might like to see his lines > > unbroken on the virtual page. > > > > We took this subject up briefly a few months ago, and I'd like to hear more > > from those who disagree with me on this. > > > > Tim Romano > > > > At 07:55 PM 9/23/01 -0700, Tim Bray wrote: > > >I have a mouldy old website that I haven't maintained in years, > > >but it has a scrapbook thingie that rolls interesting > > >quotations and meta-quotations through once every week. This > > >week there's a piece of Canto CV featuring a fairly aggressive > > >attempt to get the indentation right in HTML. Go to > > >http://www.textuality.com/ and hit the "Worth reading" link. > > > -Tim