AUCTeX - Much enhanced TeX support for Emacs

Ralf Angeli | 23 Mar 2005 09:54

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Two more website styles

As mentioned before the current website design doesn't look too good
in case there is only few content on a page, see
<URL:http://iwi.uni-sb.de/angeli/misc/auctex/multipage/>.

By trying to make the design a little more open, I came to the result
to be seen at <URL:http://iwi.uni-sb.de/angeli/misc/auctex/multipage-2/>.

The problem here is that the menu has too much weight compared to the
other parts of the page, the main content is not centered in the area
with the white background and it suspiciously looks like the old
corporate design of Hewlett-Packard.

Thus, I got rid of the box for the container and the menu in the next
iteration which can be found at
<URL:http://iwi.uni-sb.de/angeli/misc/auctex/multipage-3/>.  And this
is a solution I can actually live with.

Note that you have to use a Gecko-based browser like Mozilla Browser
or Firefox in order to see the rounded corners of the boxes because I
used a CSS tag not available in other browsers.  This is just for
prototyping and will be exchanged with a browser-independent solution
for the final design.

One remark about the last design: This is actually very cool because
the layout is based on em-units, i.e. it changes proportional to the
font size, whereas the other versions relied on fixed pixel values.
Suppose you are a visually impaired person and need to set a very
large font in your browser.  You can do this by typing `C-+' several
times.  Now watch how the results of doing this differ between the
multipage-3 and multipage-2 layouts.  (Of course, the multipage-2

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Ralf Angeli | 25 Mar 2005 14:06

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Re: Two more website styles

* Ralf Angeli (2005-03-23) writes:

> <URL:http://iwi.uni-sb.de/angeli/misc/auctex/multipage-3/>

There is an update of the pages behind the URL above.

* Rounded edges should now be available with any browser.  I used the
  technique Masayuki pointed me to (thanks for the link).  Please
  report any problems with this.  I saw a bright 1-pixel stripe when
  playing with the font size in my browser.  This probably was a
  rounding error.  If I am the only one encountering this, I'll not
  change the implementation.

* There now is a screenshot section.  The thumbnails are done like on
  the old page, i.e. a miniaturized version of the real screenshot
  with a caption below it.  They can flow just like normal text upon
  changing the font size.

  This proposal has some drawbacks.  The available space might not be
  filled very evenly.  On my computer e.g. there are two thumbnails in
  the first row and one in the second leaving a lot of free space
  between them and the navigation bar.  This could be improved by
  shrinking the thumbnails even more.  But I don't think this would be
  good because this would make it even more difficult to provide a
  descriptive caption.

  As an alternative the thumbnails could be included as a vertical
  list with the caption/description at their sides.  This is shown
  behind following URL:
  http://www.iwi.uni-sb.de/angeli/misc/auctex/multipage-3/screenshots-2.html

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Ralf Angeli | 26 Mar 2005 12:06

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Re: Two more website styles

* Ralf Angeli (2005-03-25) writes:

> * Ralf Angeli (2005-03-23) writes:
>
>> <URL:http://iwi.uni-sb.de/angeli/misc/auctex/multipage-3/>
>
> There is an update of the pages behind the URL above.
[...]
>   Now, including screenshots from other people with other setups could
>   lead to some aesthetic problems with size (ratio) and/or color of
>   the screenshots.  So an alternative to providing cropped miniatures
>   could be to use only a cut-out of the full-size screenshot with a
>   fixed width and height.  I did this with the first thumbnail on the
>   page.  Together with providing some more descriptive text this is
>   currently my favorite.

As soon as I added descriptions this didn't look good anymore, so I
settled with the minatures.  A new version can be found at the URL
mentioned above.

There now is a screenshot showing a bit of preview-latex.  I don't
know how to do the MusiXTeX, Bengali etc. stuff.  Additionally I added
a few sentences about preview-latex in the features section.
Suggestions for improvement are welcome.  preview-latex is mentioned
together with font locking and folding in a new Display section to
better reflect the structure of the manual.

The pages were tested with Mozilla Firefox, IE6 and lynx and should
work flawlessly with these.  I don't know about IE5, Opera or Netscape
4 because I don't have them installed.  If you find major glitches

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David Kastrup | 26 Mar 2005 19:59

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Re: Two more website styles

Ralf Angeli <angeli <at> iwi.uni-sb.de> writes:

> * Ralf Angeli (2005-03-25) writes:
>
>> * Ralf Angeli (2005-03-23) writes:
>>
>>> <URL:http://iwi.uni-sb.de/angeli/misc/auctex/multipage-3/>
>>
>> There is an update of the pages behind the URL above.
> [...]
>>   Now, including screenshots from other people with other setups could
>>   lead to some aesthetic problems with size (ratio) and/or color of
>>   the screenshots.  So an alternative to providing cropped miniatures
>>   could be to use only a cut-out of the full-size screenshot with a
>>   fixed width and height.  I did this with the first thumbnail on the
>>   page.  Together with providing some more descriptive text this is
>>   currently my favorite.
>
> As soon as I added descriptions this didn't look good anymore, so I
> settled with the minatures.  A new version can be found at the URL
> mentioned above.

I think that we should probably have the toolbar in our screenshots
(what toolkit is that, BTW?).  But for that, the "LaTeX" icon has to
properly follow PDF/DVI-mode switches at the very least.  Miguel, any
chance we can get this for the next release (maybe two weeks or so)?
If you are stuck with how to do something, just holler.

> There now is a screenshot showing a bit of preview-latex.  I don't
> know how to do the MusiXTeX, Bengali etc. stuff.

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Reiner Steib | 26 Mar 2005 23:46

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Re: Two more website styles

On Sat, Mar 26 2005, David Kastrup wrote:

> I think that we should probably have the toolbar in our screenshots
> (what toolkit is that, BTW?).  But for that, the "LaTeX" icon has to
> properly follow PDF/DVI-mode switches at the very least.

Just before 11.55, we changed it to use the generic "view" image
instead of mode specific ones.  I don't think that this should prevent
us from presenting the toolbar in one of the screen shots.

Bye, Reiner.

PS: I have to agree to David's recent statement about Gnus' toolbar
    icons.  Does anyone have an URL with (official) Gnome icons for
    Mail/News related stuff handy?
--

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---ooO-(_)-Ooo---  |  PGP key available  |  http://rsteib.home.pages.de/

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David Kastrup | 27 Mar 2005 00:32

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Re: Two more website styles

Reiner Steib <reinersteib+gmane <at> imap.cc> writes:

> On Sat, Mar 26 2005, David Kastrup wrote:
>
>> I think that we should probably have the toolbar in our screenshots
>> (what toolkit is that, BTW?).  But for that, the "LaTeX" icon has to
>> properly follow PDF/DVI-mode switches at the very least.
>
> Just before 11.55, we changed it to use the generic "view" image
> instead of mode specific ones.

But the "TeX" or "LaTeX" icon is mode specific.

> I don't think that this should prevent us from presenting the
> toolbar in one of the screen shots.

--

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum

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Ralf Angeli | 26 Mar 2005 21:03

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Re: Two more website styles

* David Kastrup (2005-03-26) writes:

> Ralf Angeli <angeli <at> iwi.uni-sb.de> writes:
>
>> As soon as I added descriptions this didn't look good anymore, so I
>> settled with the minatures.  A new version can be found at the URL
>> mentioned above.
>
> I think that we should probably have the toolbar in our screenshots

Well, for the old page I wanted to make a screenshot showing both the
math menu and the toolbar but couldn't really get it right.  Either
the menu poked out to the right of the window or covered part of the
toolbar.  As long as the toolbar is somewhat experimental (and only
Miguel knows the code) I don't want to have it included in every
screenshot.  Maybe I'll make two separate screenshots for the toolbar
and the math menu.  It is a pity that on Debian I don't have a single
submenu without a character missing from the font. (I probably should
try that without my ~/.fonts.conf.)  On my FreeBSD installation
another font (not Vera) is picked for the symbols, so I can get that
from there.

> (what toolkit is that, BTW?).

GTK with the Mist theme.  I activate it with
include "/usr/share/themes/Mist/gtk-2.0/gtkrc"
in ~/.gtkrc-2.0.  The window manager is a CVS Blackbox from a few
weeks ago (should be pretty much what 0.70.0 is now) with a theme I
got from the Blackbox mailing list and which I changed according to my
taste.

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David Kastrup | 26 Mar 2005 21:51

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Re: Two more website styles

Ralf Angeli <angeli <at> iwi.uni-sb.de> writes:

> * David Kastrup (2005-03-26) writes:
>
>> (what toolkit is that, BTW?).
>
> GTK with the Mist theme.  I activate it with
> include "/usr/share/themes/Mist/gtk-2.0/gtkrc"
> in ~/.gtkrc-2.0.  The window manager is a CVS Blackbox from a few
> weeks ago (should be pretty much what 0.70.0 is now) with a theme I
> got from the Blackbox mailing list and which I changed according to my
> taste.

Funny.  I use Blackbox myself, mostly because Fluxbox crashed on me if
its config file was not allowed to mangle the LC_CTYPE setting.  I
never could stand KDE, and GNOME is now gone because it has turned out
too resource-intensive for my box as well.  192MB should not
constantly page and swap.

>> I think I wrote a suggestion on the list already.  It is not quite
>> easy to capture the essence of preview-latex into a few words.
>
> Ah, now I found it.  Yes, that was that puffer-style paragraph which
> I deleted instantly from my memory because of too much marketing
> speak.  Okay, I am exaggerating, but nonetheless I'd like to make it
> a bit more decent for it to better fit in with the rest of the
> feature descriptions, if you don't mind.

Feel free.  I tend to get annoyed at any version I create myself when
reading it too often.

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Ralf Angeli | 27 Mar 2005 09:56

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Re: Two more website styles

* David Kastrup (2005-03-26) writes:

> Funny.  I use Blackbox myself, mostly because Fluxbox crashed on me if
> its config file was not allowed to mangle the LC_CTYPE setting.

Fluxbox has never appealed to me because I've never had a need for the
additional features it has to offer.  Blackbox (together with bbkeys)
does exactly what I expect from a window manager and most of the stuff
can be controlled with the keyboard; launching programs or moving and
resizing windows.  The only thing I am still yearning for is access to
the root menu with the keyboard.  And the new version of bbkeys has
some problems with resizing windows with fixed-width characters, like
Emacs or xterm.

> I never could stand KDE, and GNOME is now gone because it has turned
> out too resource-intensive for my box as well.  192MB should not
> constantly page and swap.

Maybe this will be getting better with that Gnome memory reduction
project currently going on.  Besides, Enlightenment DR17 looks
promising.  But it still needs work till it is usable.

Uh, we should activate the auctex-devel list soon, then we can babble
about "off-topic" stuff without annoying all the users.

> Well, if we are into marketing speak, I think the following would not
> be too bad:
>
> * AUCTeX: the GNU way of working with TeX
>

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Jan-Åke Larsson | 29 Mar 2005 11:00

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Re: Two more website styles

Ralf Angeli wrote:
> * Rounded edges should now be available with any browser.  I used the
>   technique Masayuki pointed me to (thanks for the link).  Please
>   report any problems with this.  I saw a bright 1-pixel stripe when
>   playing with the font size in my browser.  This probably was a
>   rounding error.  If I am the only one encountering this, I'll not
>   change the implementation.

Nope. I see it too. Mozilla 1.7.5, font-size 14px (100% zoom). This is my
default so I was surprised when it _disappeared_ when I changed text zoom.

/JÅ

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Jens Kubieziel | 23 Mar 2005 10:49

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Re: Two more website styles

* Ralf Angeli schrieb am 2005-03-23 um 09:54 Uhr:
> <URL:http://iwi.uni-sb.de/angeli/misc/auctex/multipage-3/>.  And this
> is a solution I can actually live with.

IMHO you should set "font-size: 100%" or equivalent. A fontsize of 90%
is typically used in footnotes, but its too small for normal text or
navigation bars.

--

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Minesweeper Consultant and Solitaire Expert. (User Friendly)

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Ralf Angeli | 23 Mar 2005 12:26

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Re: Two more website styles

* Jens Kubieziel (2005-03-23) writes:

> * Ralf Angeli schrieb am 2005-03-23 um 09:54 Uhr:
>> <URL:http://iwi.uni-sb.de/angeli/misc/auctex/multipage-3/>.  And this
>> is a solution I can actually live with.
>
> IMHO you should set "font-size: 100%" or equivalent. A fontsize of 90%
> is typically used in footnotes, but its too small for normal text or
> navigation bars.

I have yet to find a page where most browsers' default font size looks
good.  Sixteen pixels (assuming an average of 90dpi for the display
device) are just too large for my taste.

--

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Ralf

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David Kastrup | 23 Mar 2005 12:38

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Re: Two more website styles

Ralf Angeli <angeli <at> iwi.uni-sb.de> writes:

> * Jens Kubieziel (2005-03-23) writes:
>
>> * Ralf Angeli schrieb am 2005-03-23 um 09:54 Uhr:
>>> <URL:http://iwi.uni-sb.de/angeli/misc/auctex/multipage-3/>.  And this
>>> is a solution I can actually live with.
>>
>> IMHO you should set "font-size: 100%" or equivalent. A fontsize of
>> 90% is typically used in footnotes, but its too small for normal
>> text or navigation bars.
>
> I have yet to find a page where most browsers' default font size
> looks good.  Sixteen pixels (assuming an average of 90dpi for the
> display device) are just too large for my taste.

So what?  People sharing your taste will tend to change the default
size if it annoys them.  There is no point in being smaller than most
other pages on the net: that makes it harder for users to apply their
personal preferences and get consistent results.

--

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David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum

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Ralf Angeli | 23 Mar 2005 12:51

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Re: Two more website styles

* David Kastrup (2005-03-23) writes:

> Ralf Angeli <angeli <at> iwi.uni-sb.de> writes:
>
>> I have yet to find a page where most browsers' default font size
>> looks good.  Sixteen pixels (assuming an average of 90dpi for the
>> display device) are just too large for my taste.
>
> So what?  People sharing your taste will tend to change the default
> size if it annoys them.  There is no point in being smaller than most
> other pages on the net: that makes it harder for users to apply their
> personal preferences and get consistent results.

Actually I didn't reduce the default size in my browser because the
majority of sites I am visiting is using a smaller font size.  So
using a smaller font size in a web page is not uncommon, rather the
opposite is the case.

--

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Ralf

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Jens Kubieziel | 23 Mar 2005 13:55

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Re: Two more website styles

* Ralf Angeli schrieb am 2005-03-23 um 12:51 Uhr:
> Actually I didn't reduce the default size in my browser because the
> majority of sites I am visiting is using a smaller font size.  So
> using a smaller font size in a web page is not uncommon, rather the
> opposite is the case.

The majority of documents I get are written in MS Word. So using LaTeX,
AUCTeX, ...

It is a better style to use 100% or 1.0em for normal text. Higher values
are used for headings and smaller for footnotes and similar. The user
has to decide which font size (absolute value) he wants and is readable
for himself. This value depends from his screen resolution, personal
wishes, handicaps and so on.

--

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Jens Kubieziel                                   http://www.kubieziel.de
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Masayuki Ataka | 23 Mar 2005 10:25

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Re: Two more website styles

From: Ralf Angeli <angeli <at> iwi.uni-sb.de>
Subject: Two more website styles
Date: Wed, 23 Mar 2005 09:54:40 +0100

Three comments,

(1) Doctype is wrong.
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">

Maybe this is typo of `XHTML 1.0'.

(2) I don't like that the text width is fixed.

(3) I like 3 of them when I see it with emacs-w3m ;)

> <URL:http://iwi.uni-sb.de/angeli/misc/auctex/multipage/>.
> <URL:http://iwi.uni-sb.de/angeli/misc/auctex/multipage-2/>.
> <URL:http://iwi.uni-sb.de/angeli/misc/auctex/multipage-3/>.

thanks,
---
email: ataka <at> milk.freemail.ne.jp
Name:: Masayuki Ataka // (Japan)

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Ralf Angeli | 23 Mar 2005 11:16

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Re: Two more website styles

* Masayuki Ataka (2005-03-23) writes:

> From: Ralf Angeli <angeli <at> iwi.uni-sb.de>
> Subject: Two more website styles
> Date: Wed, 23 Mar 2005 09:54:40 +0100
>
> Three comments,
>
> (1) Doctype is wrong.
> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
>
> Maybe this is typo of `XHTML 1.0'.

Oh, thanks for pointing this out.  I wonder where I had this from and
why I got it wrong.  Because I remember that I was very careful about
that back when I introduced the page based on XHTML 1.1.  And
interestingly validator.w3.org said it was a valid XHTML 1.1 page.
Now I found a bug report
(<URL:http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/long_list.cgi?buglist=980>)
against the validator concerning this problem and the development
version of the validator mentioned in this bug report indeed told me
that this is not valid XHTML 1.1.

So I looked into <URL:http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/conformance.html>,
adapted the page accordingly (only multipage-3) and it should be fixed
now.

> (2) I don't like that the text width is fixed.

It has the advantage that lines don't become too long and therefore

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Masayuki Ataka | 23 Mar 2005 12:01

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Re: Two more website styles

From: Ralf Angeli <angeli <at> iwi.uni-sb.de>
Subject: Re: Two more website styles
Date: Wed, 23 Mar 2005 11:16:58 +0100

> * Masayuki Ataka (2005-03-23) writes:
> 
> > From: Ralf Angeli <angeli <at> iwi.uni-sb.de>

> > (1) Doctype is wrong.
> > <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
(snip)
> So I looked into <URL:http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/conformance.html>,
> adapted the page accordingly (only multipage-3) and it should be fixed
> now.
> 
If you want to write valid XHTML 1.1 page, nxml is useful
  http://www.thaiopensource.com/download/
nxml checks XHTML document and display `invalid' in mode line
if it is not valid.
For similar program, psgml is known. (I like nxml ;)

> > (2) I don't like that the text width is fixed.
> 
> It has the advantage that lines don't become too long and therefore
> hard to read on larger displays.  This is something I really hate in
> pages not limiting the line length.  I think with the em-based
> approach used in multipage-3 is the best solution here.

We should care about those who use the bigger font and the narrower
browser window; those who loves wilder browser window and long lines;

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Christian Schlauer | 23 Mar 2005 10:09

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Re: Two more website styles

Ralf Angeli <angeli <at> iwi.uni-sb.de> writes:

[...]

> One remark about the last design: This is actually very cool because
> the layout is based on em-units, i.e. it changes proportional to the
> font size, whereas the other versions relied on fixed pixel values.

That gives a really professional impression. Just curious: Did you
come up with this yourself or did you find that in a usability guide?

Maybe you should work on the Emacs web page as well  Just kidding.

--

-- 
Christian Schlauer

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Ralf Angeli | 23 Mar 2005 10:35

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Re: Two more website styles

* Christian Schlauer (2005-03-23) writes:

> Ralf Angeli <angeli <at> iwi.uni-sb.de> writes:
>
> [...]
>
>> One remark about the last design: This is actually very cool because
>> the layout is based on em-units, i.e. it changes proportional to the
>> font size, whereas the other versions relied on fixed pixel values.
>
> That gives a really professional impression. Just curious: Did you
> come up with this yourself or did you find that in a usability guide?

I read about it in <URL:http://www.alistapart.com/articles/elastic/>
and always wanted to try this with the AUCTeX home page.  But the
current desing uses a fixed-width background image which would have
made this rather difficult.  The new design doesn't use a single
image.  (Okay, I will need some as soon as the rounded corners are to
be implemented browser-independently.)

> Maybe you should work on the Emacs web page as well  Just kidding.

Well, the guidelines for maintainers of GNU software don't really
encourage you to care for your web page in terms of design, see
<URL:http://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/maintain.html#Web-Pages>.  This
is not the worst policy because it lets you keep focused on developing
the software.  But for my taste, and this is probably what you are
referring to as well, the standard design on www.gnu.org is too
simple.

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Christian Schlauer | 23 Mar 2005 13:28

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Re: Two more website styles

Ralf Angeli <angeli <at> iwi.uni-sb.de> writes:

> * Christian Schlauer (2005-03-23) writes:
>> That gives a really professional impression. Just curious: Did you
>> come up with this yourself or did you find that in a usability guide?
>
> I read about it in <URL:http://www.alistapart.com/articles/elastic/>
> and always wanted to try this with the AUCTeX home page.

Thanks for the link!

>> Maybe you should work on the Emacs web page as well  Just kidding.
>
> Well, the guidelines for maintainers of GNU software don't really
> encourage you to care for your web page in terms of design, see
> <URL:http://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain/maintain.html#Web-Pages>.  This
> is not the worst policy because it lets you keep focused on developing
> the software.  But for my taste, and this is probably what you are
> referring to as well, the standard design on www.gnu.org is too
> simple.

I think the start page has improved, but the emacs page looks like the
home page of a command line tool. But instead of nagging, I should
help improve the software and get my Emacs bug report out...

--

-- 
Christian Schlauer