Quote:
Originally Posted by roger64
Hi
I am afraid, despite all these crystal clear explanations, Jellby's request is still fuzzy for me and I must apologize for being so dumb. Sometimes a small drawing is worth one thousand words. So, maybe a screenshot of a printed text of Jellby's kind of poetry could make me realize what he is looking for. 
After that, maybe, I'll also understand probably why a negative indent is necessary.  |
Jellby combines a negative indent with a positive padding of the same value.
Now consider a line of poetry. There are two possibilities:
- The line fits completely in the width of the reader's screen.
- The line does not fit in the width of the reader's screen and has to be split in multiple lines.
In the first case, the negative indent cancels out with the positive padding and the line starts at position 0 on the left.
In the second case, the negative indent cancels out with the positive padding
in the first line but not in the second, third, etc., as text-indent only applies to the first line. So the first line starts at position 0 on the left, but the second starts at the position configured for the padding property.
In short: each new line of poetry always starts at position 0 of the left. If a line doesn't fit in the width of the screen, it continues in the next line with a small padding.
Example:
This line fits in the width of the screen
This line does not fit in the width of the
---screen
This line fits in the width of the screen
Another line that doesn't fit in the width
---of the screen
where "---" are white spaces.