Re: [Boost-users] Why is there so much co-dependency in Boost?Is there anything to be done about it?

Subject: Re: [Boost-users] Why is there so much co-dependency in Boost?Is there anything to be done about it?
From: Lars Viklund (zao_at_[hidden])
Date: 2012-09-05 16:49:07

On Wed, Sep 05, 2012 at 09:23:34AM -0800, Robert Ramey wrote:
> Lars Viklund wrote:
> > On an unrelated note, the next time I have to use the expandos in the
> > Iostreams or Serialization documentation, I'm going to cry. They're
> > such fiddly and tiny targets, so unfriendly that I think more than
> > once about using the library due to the inaccessibility of the
> > documentation.
> 
> Hmmm - would just making these bigger address your concern here?
> That would be easy to fix - just add a track item.

I'm afraid that larger targets might space out the items too much.

> Or is it the whole concept of using the navigator.  Note that the
> serialization library has the index at the top of each page just
> as all the other libraries do.  Maybe just supressing the
> navigator panel would be more to your taste. In Firefox at
> least. one can right click to open a frame in a new window
> at which point - as far as I can tell - it would be the same
> as every other boost library.

A few things that might make it slightly more accessible:

* Have an "expand-all" button to expand everything, which would make the
  sidebar much more similiar to the typical Boost library landing page.
  For Serialization, expanding everything is at most two screenheights
  or so, which is quite manageable and scrollable.

* If the sidebar becomes hideable, the documentation pages themselves
  would need some prev/up/next navigation doohickeys.

* If the sidebar becomes hideable, there ought to be a top-level page
  that contains the ToC.

Of these things, the "expand-all" and bigger twiddle targets would
likely be among the easier, while the other two would require a lot more
work.

> I included the "expando" after the fact since I found it excedingly
> tedious to navigate complex documentation through the pages
> themselves

It's an interesting idea and helps a lot with having to go
back-and-forth between the top-level page and any subpages of interest.
The downside is that it's hard to open a part you're interested in a new
tab/window and retain the sidebar frame.

One of the bothersome things about S11n/Iostreams documentation is that
it's impossible to link someone a subpage on IRC or on mail while
retaining the sidebar.

-- 
Lars Viklund | zao_at_[hidden]