Re: About 'inline special blocks'

["Juan Manuel Macías" <maciaschain@posteo.net>]

Max Nikulin writes:

Hi Maxim,

Max Nikulin writes:

> I would like to stress that styles can not be a rescue in some
> important cases. Let's leave aside ad hoc final tuning of formatting.
> In the case of HTML export there are still <img alt="Description"> and
> <a href="..." title="Description"> attributes that are namely
> per-object, not part of style.

You are right, but my question is: Could there be a similar use case
within inline special blocks? Keep in mind that this (for now,
hypothetical) element type would be intended only for very short
segments of text within the paragraph. I don't find a scenario where
it's worth overloading that with options and attributes, IMHO.

I believe that direct formatting (as a rule of composition and not as an
exception), which comes ---I suppose--- from the use and abuse of word
processors, is the great cancer for the consistency of the documents,
where a guiding style and a series of constants must prevail. Of course,
I do not deny that it is often necessary to do a post-process and adjust
exceptions. There are always exceptions. In the case of LaTeX and
ConTeXt, TeX is powerful enough to deal with exceptions also at a high
level, due to its high degree of automation. And LuaTeX, even more so. A
simple example to automatically adjust the width of the caption in
figures with a simple lua function in LuaLaTeX:

#+begin_src latex
\begin{luacode*}
  function caption_width ( text )
  text = string.gsub ( text, "(\\includegraphics.+)", "\\sbox0{%1}")
  text = string.gsub ( text, "(\\caption{.+})", "\\begin{minipage}{\\wd0}\\usebox0%1\\end{minipage}")
  return text
  end
\end{luacode*}
    \newcommand\CaptionAutoWidth{\directlua{luatexbase.add_to_callback
	( "process_input_buffer" , caption_width , "caption_width" )}}
\AtBeginDocument{\CaptionAutoWidth}
#+end_src


However, note that I speak in general terms. It is difficult to get rid
of manual intervention one hundred percent. But the question is whether
it's worth adding fine-tuning options to an element as "specialized" as
inline special blocks. Of course, LaTeX is more flexible and you can
always change a variable on the fly. You can do something like:

#+begin_src latex
\definecolor{foo}{HTML}{FF0000}
\definecolor{var}{HTML}{7CFC00}
\def\mycolor{foo}
\newcommand\mytextcolor[1]{%
  \textcolor{\mycolor}{#1}}
\begin{document}
lorem \mytextcolor{ipsum dolor}
\def\mycolor{var}
lorem \mytextcolor{ipsum dolor}
#+end_src

html/css seems more rigid and I'm not that familiar with it. Perhaps
there is more uses case where the existence of ad hoc attributes and
options would be justified? And, in any case, how to implement it
without the paragraph becoming unreadable? The solution that Ihor
commented on in a past post of using identifiers for each inline block
would be fine (and maybe it could be used also for the attributes of the
links within the paragraph).

>> in html:
>> <name>contents></name>
>
> Concerning <name> vs. <span class="name">, is it the same for
> assistive technologies like screen readers to add
> <strong>text</strong> (or <b>text</b>) and <span
> class="strong">text</span> with "font-weight: bolder;" in CSS?

"<name>contents></name>": it was my confusion, sorry. I already explained
it here: https://list.orgmode.org/8735g0tnoh.fsf@posteo.net/

Best regards,

Juan Manuel