[gentoo-user] Re: ridiculously wide handbook pages

[Grant Edwards <grant.b.edwards@gmail.com>]

On 2010-09-30, J??rg Schaible <joerg.schaible@gmx.de> wrote:
> Grant Edwards wrote:

>>> playing around here a bit more and you are correct, the text will
>>> only reformat to the width of the longest code block before the
>>> horizontal scroll appears. On the "Creating a Cross-Compiler" page
>>> you linked to the longest code block is still only half the width of
>>> my screen, so it's not really a problem on my system.
>> 
>> I could reduce the minimum size of my "fixed" font, but that only
>> helps until the next web page comes along with an even wider code
>> block.
>
> Try a different fixed font. At the end I've chosen "Monotype", because it 
> seems to have the narrowest well-readable letters.

I could do that, but IMO that's just a kludge for a broken document.

And it only works until the next web page comes along with even wider
listing blocks.

The real problem is that text and listing widths are linked.  They
shouldn't be.

I've filed a bug report:

 http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=339290

So feel free to weigh in there.

That bug report contains a link to a page that shows how I think it
should work:

  http://www.panix.com/~grante/wrapdemo.html

The text paragraphs wrap to fit within the browser width regardless of
the width of the listing blocks.

I've also set a max width on the paragraphs so that they remain
readable even when you widen the browser window to see more of the
wide listing blocks.  [I admit the max-width bit is more of a
style-preferance thing.]
 
-- 
Grant Edwards               grant.b.edwards        Yow! My mind is making
                                  at               ashtrays in Dayton ...
                              gmail.com