| Those who are not familiar restructured text may | | | | Through deployment solely of the class |
| initially bemoan it's lack of power and flexibility when | | | | "float-right-360" to the figure directive below, it is |
| compared to XHTML, but as often the case in life, | | | | possible to add a polaroid effect to a photograph in |
| initial appearances can be deceiving. | | | | the following manner: |
| Although the use of CSS for styling and presentation | | | | As reStructuredText: |
| is "best practice" in XHTML, it is not yet mandatory, | | | | .. figure:: /images/the_moon.jpg |
| which allows anyone with knowledge of such | | | | :alt: the moon |
| "deprecated" tags as "align=center" or "font", to | | | | :figclass: float-right-360 |
| illegally wreck havoc with your beautiful CMS-based | | | | The moon during a lunar-eclipse. Pretty! |
| site. | | | | To produce the following image and caption:the moon |
| Outside of a mandatory 2 month course in basic | | | | See result at: A Blog about Plone |
| XHTML and CSS, one solution which desperate | | | | Which is achieved with the following css: |
| webmasters have often deployed is to force site | | | | .float-right-360 {position: relative;float: right;text-align: |
| editors and contributors to work with WYSIWYG | | | | left;background-image: |
| editors configured to strip out any and all illegal tags. | | | | url(polaroid_360_270.png);background-repeat: |
| Not only is this a somewhat draconian solution, and | | | | no-repeat;margin: 10px 0 10px 20px;padding: 1px 8px |
| immensely frustrating from a user point of view, but | | | | 8px 1px;border: none; |
| it still doesn't bring your site any closer to being | | | | } |
| beautifully or correctly formatted. Just not illegally so. | | | | .float-right-360 img {border: #fff 7px |
| And don't get me started on tables... | | | | solid;border-bottom: #fff 36px solid;width: |
| Restructured text on the other hand forces | | | | 247px;height: 308px; |
| compliance to XHTML best practise precisely because | | | | } |
| it is not XHTML. By allowing users to work in an | | | | .float-right-360 p.caption {position: absolute;font: |
| environment much closer to the simple text notepad | | | | normal 11px/13px Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif |
| which almost everybody is familiar with, and without | | | | !important;;color: #000;margin: 0;padding: 0 10px 0 |
| a single (more often than not forgotten) tag in sight, | | | | 0;top: 321px;left: 10px; |
| the simplicity of ReST leaves the site contributor the | | | | } |
| concentrate on content, as God would have intended | | | | Note there is one limitation to this effect--the image |
| it, and takes care of the parsing of said content into | | | | used must be exactly 308px H by 247px W, |
| strict XHTML for them. | | | | because there simply aren't enough "hooks" inside the |
| But that's not all. Presentation is still possible via | | | | figure directive to deploy the necessary number of |
| CSS--also as God intends it--yet much to the relief of | | | | background images to allow scaling. |
| the site designer and webmaster--outside of the | | | | As a work around to this limitation, one could create |
| control of a user whose obsession with "beautifying" | | | | a variety of classes for pre-determined image sizes |
| one little plant can be to the detriment of the | | | | and orientations, which would also have the added |
| wellbeing of the entire garden. | | | | benefit of forcing your users to stick to creating |
| And not just the presentation of your basic | | | | images in sizes complimentary to the overall site |
| paragraph and heading tags, but, watching closely, | | | | design. |
| the ReST figure directive, which in combination with a | | | | Which raises another sore point about CMS's which |
| little CSS jiggery-pokery detailed below is capable of | | | | don't employ image-sizing engines--but that would be |
| deploying some quite remarkable effects. | | | | another topic... |
| The Polaroid Effect | | | | |