The Boston Diaries

The ongoing saga of a programmer who doesn't live in Boston, nor does he even like Boston, but yet named his weblog/journal “The Boston Diaries.”

Go figure.

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Styling feeds II

The previous entry brings me back to the styling feeds topic I brought up a week or so ago.

Normally, I tend to quote email headers in posts as:

<p>
<b>From:</b> John Doe &lt;<span class="cut">XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX</span>&gt;<br>
<b>To:</b> Sean Conner &lt;sean@conman.org&gt;<br>
<b>Subject:</b> You know, your posts are boring<br>
<b>Date:</b> Date: Tue, 25 Apr 2006 17:17:17 -0400
</p>

<p>You know, your posts are getting awfully dull lately ... </p>

Which would be rendered as thus:

From: John Doe <XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX>
To: Sean Conner <sean@conman.org>
Subject: You know, your posts are boring
Date: Tue, 25 Apr 2006 17:17:17 -0400

You know, your posts are getting awfully dull lately …

But there was an entry last month that made me rethink how I wanted to construct the headers when quoting email—basically, long email headers can span multiple lines but each subsequent line of a header should be indented with white space, and with the formatting I have above, that distinction isn't preserved (as well as the headers inherit the full justification I have for all my paragraphs, which shouldn't happen either).

So I thought about it, and I decided that really, headers could be construed as a type of dictionary list—a list of terms (the header name) and their definitions (the header contents). So the above would be encoded in HTML as:

<dl>
<dt>From</dt>
<dd>John Doe &lt;<span class="cut">XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX</span>&gt;</dd>

<dt>To</dt>
<dd>Sean Conner &lt;sean@conman.org&gt;</dd>

<dt>Subject</dt>
<dd>You know, your posts are boring</dd>

<dt>Date</dt>
<dd>Tue, 25 Apr 2006 17:17:17 -0400</dd>
</dl>

Which I would like to render as:

From
John Doe <XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX>
To
Sean Conner <sean@conman.org>
Subject
You know, your posts are boring
Date
Tue, 25 Apr 2006 17:17:17 -0400

Only if you aren't viewing this on my site with a CSS-capable browser, you won't see the intent I have for formatting, which gets us back to the post I made last month.

Am I the only one that has this concern over how my entries are presented?

Anyway, if the quoted email in the previous entry looks a bit odd, that's why—you aren't seeing it how I intended it to be seen.

Obligatory Picture

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Obligatory Contact Info

Obligatory Feeds

Obligatory Links

Obligatory Miscellaneous

You have my permission to link freely to any entry here. Go ahead, I won't bite. I promise.

The dates are the permanent links to that day's entries (or entry, if there is only one entry). The titles are the permanent links to that entry only. The format for the links are simple: Start with the base link for this site: https://boston.conman.org/, then add the date you are interested in, say 2000/08/01, so that would make the final URL:

https://boston.conman.org/2000/08/01

You can also specify the entire month by leaving off the day portion. You can even select an arbitrary portion of time.

You may also note subtle shading of the links and that's intentional: the “closer” the link is (relative to the page) the “brighter” it appears. It's an experiment in using color shading to denote the distance a link is from here. If you don't notice it, don't worry; it's not all that important.

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