Re: [boost] Re: A Formal Review Request

From: Phil Edwards (pedwards_at_[hidden])
Date: 2000-10-11 10:39:56

On Wed, Oct 11, 2000 at 11:22:53AM -0400, David Abrahams wrote:
> 
> I was about to download lynx, but couldn't figure out what anyone would want
> it for (other than this particular job). Can you motivate this tool for me?
[...]
> Ah. Maybe that's a reason to get lynx.

Conformance to HTML standards is one reason.  Speed is another (fast
screen rendering (all text :-), no graphics, etc).  Also the single-stroke
keypresses for navigation and commands make lynx a very suitable tool for
those who know how to use it.  (The arguments are the same for vi, mutt,
trn, etc; it's "that kind of person"'s backup browser.)

> I hear that most of the automated tools generate garbage, by an
> HTML-expert's standards, but I'm not sure I do any better by hand. I sure
> wish someone else would weigh in on this; I don't know enough to speak with
> authority.

Simple and hand-generated is The Way To Go[tm].  As an extremely biased
example, I offer you

    http://sources.redhat.com/libstdc++/

I did up the pages for g++'s next-generation library.  They're pretty
straightforward and render well on all the major browsers.  Very few
HTML elements are present apart from "paragraphs" and "lists".  (That
auto-inserted imagemap of redhat at the top is an exception; I didn't do
that one.)

> Well, I don't think that reading std::pair<vector<int>::iterator,
> bool> is ever going to be pythonesquically easy, but I take your point.

For what it's worth, < , > , and & are about the only three
funky characters that you'll see anywhere in the site mentioned above.
I show a fair amount of C++ that uses <, >, and &, and the "official"
way of writing them is the only portable way to get them to /not/ be
treated as tag delimiters.

> what-the-heck-is-css-ly y'rs,
> dave

Oh... Content Style Sheets.  There is some minimal CSS on the libstdc++-v3
site.  That text-ish logo on top of the gray sidebar is about it.  It will
be a Good Thing for web designers once browsers start supporting it more;
right now it's not good at much more than standardizing fonts and whatnot
across a set of pages.  (They're trying to provide a standard alternative
to all the browser extensions for layout.)

You now know about as much as I do about the tools of web authoring.

Phil

-- 
pedwards at disaster dot jaj dot com  |  pme at sources dot redhat dot com
devphil at several other less interesting addresses in various dot domains
The gods do not protect fools.  Fools are protected by more capable fools.