[boost] Re: Serialization Menu

From: Jonathan Turkanis (technews_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-07-16 11:06:26

"David Abrahams" <dave_at_[hidden]> wrote in message
news:ubrih5tb5.fsf_at_boost-consulting.com...
> "Jonathan Turkanis" <technews_at_[hidden]> writes:
>
> > "Vladimir Prus" <ghost_at_[hidden]> wrote in message
> > news:200407151037.40144.ghost_at_cs.msu.su...
> >> Jonathan Turkanis wrote:
> >>
> >> > I think Robert's menu is very effective, and was hoping it

<snip>

> >> 2. It takes qutie a lot of screen space.
> >
> > I guess this is a matter of taste. Some existing libraries have a
> > navigation panel on the left (maybe PP is the only one), so this
issue
> > isn't really related to scripting.
>
> No, but frames present a different problem: it can be hard to link
to
> individual pages in the doc.
>
> Ultimately the ideal thing would be that the browser "thinks" it's
> visiting an address that causes the index and content pages to come
> up exactly as they're being viewed, but I've never seen a
> frames-based interface that works that way.

Could you explain what you mean by 'come up exactly as they're being
viewed'? I think I understand, but I'm not sure.

It's possible to have a library's homepage parse the portion of its
url following '?' and load a particular page into the index frame and
another into the content frame. This would allow, e.g., links into the
reference documentation of Boost.PP. I'm not sure this is what you're
talking about, though.

> >> At all events, I'd prefer constistent look of all Boost library
> >> docs (and the ability to print them), to every author introducing
> >> something they like.
> >
> > I agree completely.
>
> But can we agree on a look/feel that works?  Several library authors
> seem convinced that the "usual conventions" are broken and won't be
> satisfied unless they can stamp their own notions of usability on
> their docs.

Maybe not. But at least some of the current variation seems unrelated
to usability (for instance, the font size for preformatted text.)
Maybe a more comprehensive boost.css and some more templates would
help.

Jonathan