Re: CSS for Help Docs

[Nicholas Curran <quasar austar net au>]

Hey.

Thanks for the comments.  An altered version is now at
http://members.austarmetro.com.au/~quasar .

The Style Guide does not demonstrate tips, cautions, notes and
warnings.  Therefore, I have also included the template, edited to show:
 * The affect of the CSS.
 * A caution and a tip.  (Yeah, the toolbar cat nonsense *is* silly.)

Further notes below.

On Sun, 2002-02-03 at 07:06, Alexander Kirillov wrote:
> 
> Dear Nicholas:
> thanks for doing this! We definitely need a CSS. Here are some comments:
> 
> 0. I liked the blue striped background. 

:)

> 1. we need to agree on whether the logo is added by  XSL stylesheets or
> by the CSS. We can't have both (as it is in your example). Doing it via
> XSL stylesheets allows using different logos for different apps (as
> suggested on this list earlier); doing it via CSS, as part of background
> image, looks nicer. Ideas?

The logo is yours to take care of.  I just included the foot as a
demonstration of where I believe the icon should go.  I should have
mentioned this in my last post.

> 2. Please tone done the yellow color used for examples. Right now, it is
> way too aggressive. Also: wouldn't it be better to just put a solid
> background (a  light one) under the whole example rahter than to use 
> gradient?  

Didn't seem that bad to me.  Or that good for that matter.  I had
difficulties doing the solid background for the programlisting, due to
the text not wrapping and going beyond the box, and without thinking
believed this extended to examples.  Any better now?

> By the way, I liked very much the way examples are shown in Dave
> Raggett's HTML guides (see http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Guide/Style.html) -
> he uses different foreground color for them. Maybe we should do the same
> with <programlisting> and <screen> tags? 

I like this idea.  It has been implemented.

> 3. Something is wrong with the way lists are shown (see sections 1.3,
> 1.4). Do we really want that much space between number (1.)  or bullet
> and the text?

Badly designed CSS, my problem.  I was specifying most of the major 
HTML elements, and indenting them, which caused this problem.  Now I
just indent the body, and make the browser knock the headers into the
margin.

> 4. I's rather *not* have the horizontal rule after section titles and
> things  such as "Copyright", "Authors", etc. in the titlepage. 

Drake (Eric) noticed yesterday, when I was asking for opinions in IRC,
that I had completely forgot about the title page.  So I just added the
CSS to it, and the result was ugly.

Now I use a second CSS for the title page, which removes the 'horizontal
rules' from <h2> tags.

> 5. One place that  might use some  colors is the navigation headers (top
> and bottom). But I do not know what would be the best thing to do with
> them... 

Mmmm.  I'm pretty happy with the appearance of the headers.  I don't
think the result would be that pretty, and the strips at the top will
probably end up being partly covered up if we specify a colour for the
top header.

Did you have any colour in mind?  There is no harm in trying one, or a
few.

> 6. We might show this to usability people - e.g.  Seth Nickell
> <snickell stanford edu>, who (AFAIK) is responsible for default theme
> for GNOME 2. They have to look nicely togetehr. 

The accessibility people may also have an interest in this.  A CSS can
have aural attributes, which means that it can state how a HTML doc can
be read out to the user.  Perfect for the blind, if we have that
technology in GNOME (I haven't looked at GNOME's accessibility
features.).

Enjoy.  I am still interested in more comments, good and bad.

Nick Curran
<quasar austar net au>