Views from the Choir Loft

Drop Caps : the CSS Way

Veronica Brandt · October 3, 2019

A NICE paragraph to start the experiment. Can we access stylistic alternates with CSS here? The drop cap only spans two lines. Think of other things to type. Let’s keep it upbeat. Red balloons are here. And a colorful xylophone. Or glockenspiel – whichever is the metal one. Did the drop cap get bigger with more lines of text? It shouldn’t. So it’s 2.5 ish lines big.

The world’s thy ship and not thy home.
St. Thérèse de Lisieux

A NICE paragraph to start the experiment. Can we access stylistic alternates with CSS here? The drop cap only spans two lines. Think of other things to type. Let’s keep it upbeat. Red balloons are here. And a colorful xylophone. Or glockenspiel – whichever is the metal one. Did the drop cap get bigger with more lines of text? It shouldn’t. So it’s 2.5 ish lines big.

So, the idea is to make a new paragraph and a class for a fancier and probably bigger drop cap. The current class is has-drop-cap. So maybe make the new one has-fancy-drop-cap. To the CSS editor!!! This paragraph needed a few more words to cover the drop cap. Hopefully a few more sentences will cover it. I can’t hear the cicadas anymore. I wonder why. Cicadas are pretty amazing, but I’m grateful they only turn up every few years.

The splendor of the rose and the whiteness of the lily do not rob the little violet of it’s scent nor the daisy of its simple charm. If every tiny flower wanted to be a rose, spring would lose its loveliness.
St. Thérèse de Lisieux

Some flimsy reason to start another paragraph with a slightly different letter S. I’m crocheting a pentagonal face washer. It was going to be a Granny Square, but working the first round into a ring at the beginning gave me 15 stitches and I thought I could make a Tudor Rose out of it. Maybe I’ll publish a book of crochet motifs next. I wonder if there’s a LaTeX package for typesetting crochet diagrams.

THIS span way of working seems to line up the drop cap better – I’m using Chrome on an iMac just now, but will go check on Firefox on Linux soon. I wish the CEO of Firefox would apologise for firing that guy so I can stop boycotting them – though I guess it might be more ethical to use a fork like iceweasel. I think Seamonkey was a firefox fork too. The browser wars just kept getting more complicated.

Opinions by blog authors do not necessarily represent the views of Corpus Christi Watershed.

About Veronica Brandt

Veronica Brandt holds a Bachelor Degree in Electrical Engineering. She lives near Sydney, Australia, with her husband and six children.—(Read full biography).

6 January 2021 • Anglicans on Plainsong

A book published by Anglicans in 1965 has this to say about Abbat Pothier’s Editio Vaticana, the musical edition reproduced by books such as the LIBER USUALIS (Solesmes Abbey): “No performing edition of the music of the Eucharistic Psalmody can afford to ignore the evidence of the current official edition of the Latin Graduale, which is no mere reproduction of a local or partial tradition, but a CENTO resulting from an extended study and comparison of a host of manuscripts gathered from many places. Thus the musical text of the Graduale possesses a measure of authority which cannot lightly be disregarded.” They are absolutely correct.

—Jeff Ostrowski

2 January 2021 • Temptation

When I see idiotic statements made on the internet, I go nuts. When I see heretics promoted by people who should know better, I get angry. Learning to ignore such items is difficult—very difficult. I try to remember the words of Fr. Valentine Young: “Do what God places in front of you each day.” When I am honest, I don’t believe God wants me to dwell on errors and idiocy; there’s nothing I can do about that. During 2021, I will strive to do a better job following the advice of Fr. Valentine.

—Jeff Ostrowski

31 December 2020 • “COMITES CHRISTI”

The feasts for Saint Stephen Proto-Martyr (26 December), Saint John the Evangelist The Disciple Whom Jesus Loved (27 December), and the Feast of the Holy Innocents (28 December) seem untouched by any liturgical reforms. These are very powerful feasts—I believe they once possessed octaves—and I believe they could sometimes “overpower” a Sunday feast. The rules for octaves in the olden days are extremely complex. These feasts are sometimes referred to as a single entity as: Comites Christi (“Companions of Christ”). This is just a guess, but there seems to be a triple significance: STEPHEN martyred after Christ lived, JOHN was a martyr who knew Christ personally, and the HOLY INNOCENTS were martyred before Christ’s birth.

—Jeff Ostrowski