Scripsit Ben C:

> On 2008-04-27, Jukka K. Korpela <jkorpela@cs.tut.fi> wrote:
> [...]
>> The <div> markup only means a block. When the end tag </div> is
>> encountered, a line break is generated
>
> Loosely speaking I suppose this is OK, but </div>'s effect on text is
> more like a paragraph separator than a line break.

No, it's strictly so that <div> specifies a block, and this means line
breaks before and after and no other default effect on rendering. The
HTML 4.01 specification says this poorly but clearly enough:

"The DIV and SPAN elements, in conjunction with the id and class
attributes, offer a generic mechanism for adding structure to documents.
These elements define content to be inline (SPAN) or block-level (DIV)
but impose no other presentational idioms on the content."
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/stru....html#edef-DIV

>> Tables have their own rendering rules, including the fact that flow
>> does not continue from one cell to another. I think there's nothing
>> in the specifications that says this explicitly, but this is clearly
>> the intent and it's how browsers work.
>
> The CSS spec says that a table cell is a "block formatting context".
> This means that the flow inside the table cell is not affected by any
> floats originating outside it, and also that no floats originating
> inside a table cell affect the flow of anything outside it.

That's undoubtedly the idea, but I was unable to find it stated
explicitly.

Besides, the effect of HTML markup is distinct from CSS and cannot be
formally governed by CSS specifications. Regarding the effect of
align="..." and <br ...>, HTML specifications are the only authoritative
source (and pretty lame and obscure in this issue).

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