[WEB4LIB] WRAP Attribute for Forms

[Gimon, Charles A]

Your research is telling you the correct answer: WRAP is not an attribute of
TEXTAREA in HTML 4. The idea is that wrapping should be handled as
presentation, that is, the end user's browser can wrap the text in the box
or not.

Accepting raw input from users with embedded "end-of-lines" might be
problematic in some cases, since Windows, Mac and the various flavors of
Unix all handle "end-of-line" in different ways.

Some browsers do let you WRAP a TEXTAREA, but since the standard I'm
introducing here requires all pages to validate against HTML 4 Transitional,
I never use it.

--Charles Gimon
  Web Coordinator
  Minneapolis Public Library

> -----Original Message-----
> From: peterson at amigos.org [mailto:peterson at amigos.org]
> Sent: Monday, July 10, 2000 1:25 PM
> To: Multiple recipients of list
> Subject: [WEB4LIB] WRAP Attribute for Forms
> 
> 
> There probably is an easy answer for this, but I can't seem 
> to find it.
> I'm getting ready to teach the creation of forms for 
> librarians.  I was
> re-checking the standard and ran into a brick wall.  I see 
> references in
> books and on web sites for WRAP being used in the <TEXTAREA> 
> tag.  However,
> I can't verify that it is a legitimate attribute.  I couldn't find it
> listed in the current HTML specification:
> 
> http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/
> 
> I've tried some of the more well-known HTML reference sites; 
> some use it as
> if it were part of the specification and some don't mention it.  I've
> checked to see if it is part of either Netscape and Microsoft 
> extensions --
> no luck.
> 
> Can someone shed some light on this for me?  Is it part of 
> HTML 4.01 or
> not?  Any help would be appreciated!
> 
> Christine Peterson
> Library Liaison Officer
> Amigos Library Services
> 14400 Midway Road
> Dallas, TX  75244-3509
> 800/843-8482
> www.amigos.org
> peterson at amigos.org
> 
>