Flicking through docs (was: Re: PDFs for user-guide, accessibility-guide and system-admin-guide)

[Joachim Noreiko <jnoreiko yahoo com>]

Apologies for previous empty mail. Yahoo went weird on
me.

--- Alexander Larsson <alexl redhat com> wrote:

> I agree that PDF has a lot of disadvantages compared
> to HTML, and my
> proposal wasn't really what I'd call well thought
> through. However, I
> still think that reading e.g. the user guide pdf has
> a couple of
> advantages to the current yelp html docs.
> 
> For instance, if I was to actually read a large part
> of the user guide
> (instead of just look up some particular section in
> it) I'd prefer the
> pdf. With the html version the reading experience is
> very chopped up
> because the displayed sections are often very short,
> and you have to
> mouse around to find the "next section" link. 

Alt-Up and Alt-down do this.

> Its
> also much harder to
> browse the document just looking for interesting
> stuff. And, as
> mentioned before, the pdf version prints better. 
> 
> Of course, much of this isn't really due to inherent
> pdf vs html format
> issues, but rather that the pdf is flowed over a
> continuous set of pages
> that are easy to flip through, while the html is
> chopped up into small
> sections that are sort of awkward to move between.
> Maybe we could just
> format the html into larger chunks? Say one chapter
> instead of the
> smallest level section in the document.

I think sections of about one or two screen's worth
are about right. More than that and I want to find a
way to split them up.
Yelp in 2.14 can jump to a point within a section, but
I think it's distracting to start to read midway down
a page.

However, I do see your point about wanting to
mouse-wheel through the whole thing to see what
catches your eye.

After all, a book is made up of relatively short
pages, and you can read one without being distracted
by the others.
Yet you can also flick through the whole thing very
quickly.

Perhaps we can think of a way for yelp to allow both
kinds of behaviour.


		
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