Unqualified Offerings

This next message is for testing autogenerated code with multiple text blocks:

First and most importantly: Thank you.

Second and less importantly: I think the NS4 version is fine and there’s no reason to go to a separate style sheet. It doesn’t sound like stripping all the styles out solves the nested tags “problem” anyway.

Third: On the nested tags. I learned to use in-line blockquote and list tags because otherwise Blogger overspaced before and after the block. I see now how that causes the quote tags to fall inside a single set of paragraph tags. Here’s a question: Would it be possible to get around the problem by

1) Hitting two carriage returns before and after quote-blocks so MT creates the para tags.

2) Reformatting the before spacing and after spacing of BLOCKQUOTE inside the style sheet, so you don’t get the excessive gaps.

My problem with turning off para-tag generation and such approaches is that the whole reason for using a CMS is to make it tons easier to concentrate on writing rather than coding. It seems like dropping back to what amounts to tagging everything manually is an admission of defeat somehow.

What I particularly want to see are what tags are generated inside the blockquote tags.

Hm! I just tried something new within MT that almost eliminates overlapping tags entirely - stick the open-block tag on inline with the introductory message text. Then double space. That closes one para and opens a new one. At the end of the quoted text another double-carriage return, then put the close-block tag in-line with the next message body paragraph. You get an overlap there too. What you don’t get is text swallowed up.

3) Make functionally new tag using the code module function of MT? Essentially it’s

<$q$&gt = </p&gt<blockquote&gt<p&gt
</$q$&gt=</p?&gt</blockquote&gt<p&gt and use inline like always.

Or define a new span class, e.g. “quote”, with appropriate padding/margins/what-have-you. Then you have

<$q$&gt = </p&gt<span class=”quote”&gt<p&gt
</$q$&gt=</p?&gt</span&gt<p&gt and use inline like always.

Or cut out the middleman and make it a p-class:

<$q$&gt = </p&gt<p class=”quote”&gt
</$q$&gt=</p?&gt</p&gt and use inline like always.

I was wondering if it gets worse with two blocks. I’m about to find out.