Re: [boost] Javascript?

From: David Abrahams (dave_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-09-09 13:45:34

From: "Rozental, Gennadiy" <Gennadiy_at_[hidden]>

> > The practical effect of Javascript in documentation is that
> > it can only be
> > viewed with certain web browsers, and those pages cannot be reliably
> > printed.
>
> I do not believe that is true.
>
> 1. Browsers conformance to Javascript standard is good enough in most
cases
> (it's better then let say C++ compilers conformance to C++ standart).
> Especially if you limit to use only Javascript 1.2.
> 2. Even with Javascript 1.5 it's pretty easy to write "portable" code.
> 3. Javascript is essential tool  manage repetitive tasks. In this since
it
> is as important as usage of external style sheets.

If you want to manage repetetive tasks, you can build an html generator
which spits out solid, JavaScript-free html from the non-redundant source
of your choice.

> 4. Javascript is essential tool for enhancing docs readability. For
example
> Preprocessor docs hides bulky example to prevent obscuring reference page
> content. Note that MSDN site doing the same.
> 5. Problems with printing in most cases does not related to Javascript
but
> to the styling.
> 6. According to recent info in net ~95-97 present of browsers domain is
> covered by ie and clones. Among the developers numbers are different of
> course but ie still prevail I think. All others browsers try to keep up
with
> de facto standard ie. Though I would not want to discuss this point too
> much.
>
> Since You did not provide a real reasons for banning javascript,

??! Beman's reasons were at least as "real" as that list you gave above.
Argue all you want for JavaScript, but we've had at least two real users
report real problems with the JavaScript docs. Straight HTML does not have
the same kind of issues.

Your Boost.Test page is behaving strangely on IE 6.0 under WinXP. When I
first arrived there, the page had a gray background and a border. One click
on that annoying animated menu and it turned white forever. So much for
de-facto standards and portable code.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but that menu is a prime example of poor
user-interface design. The animation adds nothing, but makes it
harder-to-use by hiding the thing I need to click on until I move past it.
If nothing else, banning JavaScript will keep us from wasting time about
this sort of interface "cuteness".

> may be we
> could consider giving it at least some chances to be usable?

It's already wasted too much time; arguing about and debugging each piece
of JavaScript will just waste more.
IMO.

-----------------------------------------------------------
           David Abrahams * Boost Consulting
dave_at_[hidden] * http://www.boost-consulting.com