From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,6487f59679c615d8 X-Google-NewGroupId: yes X-Google-Attributes: gida07f3367d7,domainid0,public,usenet X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Received: by 10.68.125.233 with SMTP id mt9mr4012090pbb.5.1336087558755; Thu, 03 May 2012 16:25:58 -0700 (PDT) MIME-Version: 1.0 Path: pr3ni965pbb.0!nntp.google.com!news2.google.com!goblin3!goblin1!goblin.stu.neva.ru!news.tornevall.net!news.jacob-sparre.dk!munin.jacob-sparre.dk!pnx.dk!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: "Randy Brukardt" Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: Ada Reference Manual 2012 in info format Date: Thu, 3 May 2012 18:25:53 -0500 Organization: Jacob Sparre Andersen Research & Innovation Message-ID: References: <82aa1ud0l3.fsf@stephe-leake.org> NNTP-Posting-Host: static-69-95-181-76.mad.choiceone.net X-Trace: munin.nbi.dk 1336087557 25477 69.95.181.76 (3 May 2012 23:25:57 GMT) X-Complaints-To: news@jacob-sparre.dk NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 3 May 2012 23:25:57 +0000 (UTC) X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2900.5931 X-RFC2646: Format=Flowed; Response X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2900.6157 Date: 2012-05-03T18:25:53-05:00 List-Id: "Jerrid Kimball" wrote in message news:jnu7u0$16o$1@munin.nbi.dk... > On 04/30/2012 10:19 PM, Randy Brukardt wrote: ... >> I suppose some people need to have a pile of eye-candy before they're >> willing to use anything. Sad. > > It's really much more than that. With a community of sites that generally > look like Ada Home, no casual developer is going to stick around. When > the impression is that something is dead or near death who wants to invest > any time, money or energy in it? AdaHome, of course, is dead and has been for 15 years. If people look at dead sites first, surely they *are* going to have a problem that way. (I'm not sure why it even stays on the 'net). > As a whole, we give this impression. It's not necessarily our faults > being left-brained and all, but at some point not presenting a modern face > to the world at large hurts us as a whole. AdaIC for example has done a > decent job updating its appearance. You're probably right; the superficial is far more important these days than any substance (of which there is precious little). In all seriousness, this is not a world that I care to inhabit. Ada has tended to be the rare exception to that. >> For the record, the design of the Ada Standard HTML had two main >> criteria: >> (1) Look as similar to the PDF as possible; and (2) use only basic HTML 4 >> so >> that works on as many devices and browsers as possible. Those goals >> prevent >> the use of any significant eye-candy. (So does the desire to have these >> things work for people who insist on safe browsing - no scripts, no >> flash, >> no crap.) > > > These are all noble goals, but I think they're silly in today's > environment. I think expecting a PDF to look like a webpage or vice versa > (cue eye rolling). The PDF (and the printed page) for the Ada Reference Manual is very readable and a great way to impart the information. The navigation is admittedly, terrible. The reason that I lobbied for the HTML version in the first place was to get that extra navigation (the HTML links the index, the syntax, and the cross-references). But there is no reason whatsoever to lose the readability of the original just to get extra navigation. I can see efforts to further improve the navigation and presentation in narrow ways (in particular, preventing really long lines on wide screens). But the entire point of the ARM is to present information concisely -- too much eye candy is going to detract a lot from that (just as it does on the new AdaIC website). > Today's web looks a lot different than it did in 1995 and there's a point > where you just have to say fuck it and leave those old devices in their > own filth. Yeah, most sites are hardly useable unless you allow them to show you malware-laden ads and run god-knows-what on your computer. It's all change for the sake of change; there's no benefit to most of it, and it wastes everyone's time -- they could have been building something useful to humanity, but instead they're fiddling with colors and fonts. (And those big corporations want it that way -- much less likely that you'll come up with something truely disruptive that they can't copy.) >We have to get it together as a *brand* and quit being curmudgeonly >engineers all the time and proselytize by not looking like a heap of >fossils. We're not going to get together around that. I *am* a fossil and proud of it. I much prefer using things that work rather than changing them just for the sake of change. Yes, I much prefer the look of Windows 2000 to any of the later versions -- in large part because the changes brought almost no improvement in usability. (For that, a disruptive change, like moving to the touch interfaces of modern phones, is needed. Incremental improvements are OK only if they are completely compatible, something almost every software developer seems to forget.) That isn't to say that change is necessarily bad, but it has to have *clear* benefits for the time (relearning in particular) and money investment. The vast majority doesn't have that, and a lot of a obvious step backwards (where important functionality disappears - much like Microsoft deciding that we don't need a Start Menu in Windows 8 -- I almost exclusively use the Start Menu to launch GUI programs, I never, ever use the desktop to launch programs, occassionally by double-clicking on a file (but that's rather rare). Enough ranting. If you do spend time making an alternative version of the Standard, I strongly recommend that you do so by modifying the ARM_Formatter tool. That way, you can convert future versions of the Standard to your format easily (if it is a by-hand conversion, it will become obsolete far quicker than you realize and then you'll either have to do it all again or forget it). And that would also allow the alternate version to be used on the Rationale and other standards documents, if that is appropriate someday. (That's what Stephen Leake did with the "info" version.) Randy.