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

Subject: Re: [Boost-users] Why is there so much co-dependency inBoost?Is there anything to be done about it?
From: Robert Ramey (ramey_at_[hidden])
Date: 2012-09-05 22:34:40

Lars Viklund wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 05, 2012 at 09:23:34AM -0800, Robert Ramey wrote:
> 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.

These are in fact not too hard.  I'll consider it.

It turns out that I've been sucked in to spending time learning about
XSLT, XML editors, DocBooK, BoostBook. etc.  So I've
considered re-formating the serialization documentation in terms
of BoostBook which would address all he the  above and give
the serialization library documentation a more up date look
compatible with the other boost libraries.

BUT - I would lose the navigator - which I'm actually in love with.

What I would really like is an XSLT script which would build
a free-floating BoostBook Navigator which would navigate
all the boost book docs. Of course it's usage would be optional.

>> 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.

Agreed. Actually it probably would be easy to implement a
right click functionality to open the selected page in another
tab or window.

So to summarize

a) a Navigator in a separate window which looks like
the table of contents panel in the serialzation libary
b) with expand/collapse functionality
c) which opens pages in a main window, new window or tab
d) is built using an XSLT script from BoostBook XML.
e) could be used to navigate all boost book documentation

> 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.

Totally agree.  My above idea would fix this since the navigator would
be in a separate window and not clobber the page's URL.

Robert Ramey