Re: Problem reading source code online

From: Daryle Walker (darylew_at_[hidden])
Date: 2001-03-27 09:38:02

on 3/26/01 6:16 PM, David Abrahams at abrahams_at_[hidden] wrote:

> I think you may be able to fix this by making the following changes in
> RegEdit:
> 
> HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\<extension>: Content Type = text/plain
> 
> where <extension> is .hpp, .h, .cpp, etc...
> 
> **** BUT I THINK MANY PEOPLE WILL HAVE THE SAME PROBLEM ****
> Therefore, I propose that a script be added to the boost release process
> which redirects all links to source files so that they point at HTML-ized
> versions. I would be happy to produce a Python script, if it can be
> integrated with the release process. I think Beman is away at ACCU, so we
> may not hear back on this for a while.
> ************************************************************

I feel that this is the absolutely worst way to solve this.  If the web site
is returning "application/octet" for our text header files, we have to tell
the server operators to correct their extension-to-MIME type mapping.  This
way will help everyone at once without extra tools.

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: <kevin_vanhorn_at_[hidden]>
> To: <boost_at_[hidden]>
> Sent: Monday, March 26, 2001 4:25 PM
> Subject: [boost] Problem reading source code online
> 
> 
>> There appears to be a problem with the web server hosting the Boost
>> site.  When I read documentation online and click on links to header
>> files, the HTTP reply gives a type of "application/octet" instead of
>> "text/plain", with the result that my browser won't display the file
>> even though it is plain text.  This is extremely annoying.
>> 
>> I've tried playing with my Netscape preferences, but it steadfastly
>> refuses to even consider displaying anything with a type of
>> "application/octet".  I haven't been able to find a way to tell the
>> browser that files ending in ".h", ".cpp", ".hpp", etc. are really
>> just plain text.
>> 
>> BTW, has anyone found a good way of printing out the Boost library
>> documentation?  It seems that nowadays everybody supplies
>> documentation only in HTML format, which is a problem for people like
>> me who don't want to be chained to the computer when they read.
>> (Yes, I know that you can laboriously print out a page at a time from
>> the browser.  This is slow, painful, and the result looks awful.)

You would have to print out the documentation even if it was supplied as
text.  Boost doc pages don't tend to use huge and/or flashy features, so
print-rendering shouldn't be as difficult as an usual web page.  Some of our
pages could be very long and/or use big tables, so that could be a problem.

-- 
Daryle Walker
Mac, Internet, and Video Game Junkie
darylew AT mac DOT com