From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org ([208.92.234.80] helo=lists.gentoo.org) by finch.gentoo.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1P1Nzh-0001cW-0E for garchives@archives.gentoo.org; Thu, 30 Sep 2010 18:36:37 +0000 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 0DDD9E0A49; Thu, 30 Sep 2010 18:36:19 +0000 (UTC) Received: from smtp.gentoo.org (smtp.gentoo.org [140.211.166.183]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id CA55AE0A49 for ; Thu, 30 Sep 2010 18:36:18 +0000 (UTC) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by smtp.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 727EE67FF9 for ; Thu, 30 Sep 2010 18:36:18 +0000 (UTC) X-Virus-Scanned: by amavisd-new using ClamAV at gentoo.org X-Spam-Score: -2.259 X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-2.259 required=5.5 tests=[AWL=0.340, BAYES_00=-2.599] Received: from smtp.gentoo.org ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (smtp.gentoo.org [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with ESMTP id 5mRBdNBaQUvt for ; Thu, 30 Sep 2010 18:36:11 +0000 (UTC) Received: from lo.gmane.org (lo.gmane.org [80.91.229.12]) by smtp.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7C2C21B4001 for ; Thu, 30 Sep 2010 18:36:10 +0000 (UTC) Received: from list by lo.gmane.org with local (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1P1NzB-000285-LB for gentoo-user@gentoo.org; Thu, 30 Sep 2010 20:36:05 +0200 Received: from dsl.comtrol.com ([64.122.56.22]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Thu, 30 Sep 2010 20:36:05 +0200 Received: from grant.b.edwards by dsl.comtrol.com with local (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Thu, 30 Sep 2010 20:36:05 +0200 X-Injected-Via-Gmane: http://gmane.org/ To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org From: Grant Edwards Subject: [gentoo-user] Re: ridiculously wide handbook pages Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2010 18:35:47 +0000 (UTC) Message-ID: References: Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Reply-to: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org X-Gmane-NNTP-Posting-Host: dsl.comtrol.com User-Agent: slrn/pre0.9.9-102 (Linux) X-Archives-Salt: d5a82600-a27c-4fc6-af35-f9a6d1987352 X-Archives-Hash: 6076e3021b74d02d28cb82ea6e0cccf2 On 2010-09-30, Grant Edwards wrote: > On 2010-09-30, Darren Kirby wrote: >> On Thu, Sep 30, 2010 at 11:13 AM, Grant Edwards >> wrote: >> >>> >>> I can understand that things like example code blocks or sample >>> command input/output blocks might need to be wide enough to require >>> horizontal scrolling of a browser window, but normal text paragraphs >>> with 160 characters per line? >> >> I'm not seeing a problem here. Sure, the lines are long but my screen >> is large and my resolution is high. A quick play with firefox and konq >> shows that the text reformats itself quite elegantly when you resize >> your browser window to say, 2/3 of screen width. > > I'm using firefox, and the text doesn't reformat for me. I just end > up with a change in the size of the horizontal scrollbar. Are you > sure you're looking at the same pages I was talking about? > > http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?full=1 > http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/base/embedded/handbook/?part=1&chap=2 OK, I think the problem is caused by "literal" blocks (the ones containing command-line examples with the light-blue background where nothing ever wraps). The _minimum_ line-wrap length for normal text paragraphs is determined by the _maximum_ line length in a literal block. Resizing the browser window horizontally only reformats text _if_ the window is wider than the longest literal block line. For many of the pages that requires more screen width than I, for one, have. IOW, for any pages with long command line examples (or program output examples), you end up with very unweildy text paragraphs. I'm not sure what formatting system the manual pages use (to me the pages look way too clean, consistent, and neat to be hand-coded). Using asciidoc, for example, you avoid this problem by specifying a maxmimum width for normal text blocks so that they won't end up being arbitrarily long depending on what command line examples you happen to have in the document. I find 40em to be a nice max width: asciidoc -a data-uri -a toc -a max-width=40em >> I think that's a better solution than imposing some arbitrary line >> length on everyone no matter their screen size and resolution. No, I wouldn't want to impose an arbitrary line lenth on everybody, but that's exactly what we have now. The arbitrary line length that's imposed is (length >= max(lengths-of-lines-in-literal-blocks)). For pages without any wide literal blocks, it's not an issue, and the normal paragaphs reflow as they should. For most of the manual pages that I look at, it is an issue. I'd prefer to have the line lengths determined by the browser window, and that's not what we have now for much of the manual. -- Grant Edwards grant.b.edwards Yow! Edwin Meese made me at wear CORDOVANS!! gmail.com