would someone like to propose some ideas for making it possible to set width,height of a span element without causing a line break? 

this seems to be an old problem a number of web devs would like to have solved. some browsers have this implemented, but apparently the spec in CSS2 10.3.1 and the lack of usable values for display property makes this seemingly impossible. 

setting a width and height should do what average joe user would think it does, set the width and height, without causing a line break like div does. float doesn't always work for an answer, because it reworks the flow of the content and may mess things up so it's unusable (with float in).

example problem:
when I make line counters, the width is always not set regardless of value of display property or combination with float:left. no css-only solution available.
thanks.

this seems to stem from block vs. inline thing. apparently block elements always are forced to cause a line break and I wish this wasn't so. it would be nice if there was some css to turn off (?)line-break on block level elements. that might solve a lot of problems and time I spend trying to get around being forced to use float. I would have to look somewhere to see if display:inline-block or display:run-in supports what I am describing, but when I try to use it with a counter, it doesn't work. when I try this out as just
http://Jesusnjim.com/web-design/DHTML/set-width-height-on-span.html
fails with current version of line numbering in http://JesusnJim.com/web-design/DHTML/js-associative-arrays-and-for-in.html (see code.css and /encode-decode-entities.js).