[FM Discuss] UI Challenge

Tue Aug 31 08:00:54 PDT 2010

hello,

On Tue, 2010-08-31 at 08:22 -0500, James Simmons wrote:
> Adam,
> 
> Rather than make the interface more elaborate I'd like to have some
> simple (I hope) things:
> 

okedoke...

> 1).  A more reasonable default style sheet.  The one we have uses
> really big fonts for titles, sections, TOC, and really small ones for
> content.  It also makes a lot of stuff ALL CAPS  when it really should
> not.  The style sheet I'm putting together for MYOSA might be the
> basis for a reasonable default, and it uses the same fonts that
> Collaborative Futures uses.
> 

yes, i think we need to tweak the default but it will never please
everyone, aesthetics being what they are :) I have a book designer on
the job this week as it happens...

> 2).  More reasonable default behavior for page breaks.  A heading (h2,
> h3) should never be left at the bottom of a page with the section
> following it on the next page.  A table should not be split across
> pages if it can be avoided.  On the other hand a list of bullets CAN
> be split across pages.

this is quite an issue. its such an issue that neither google, apple, or
mozilla have solved this ie. good css control of page based media.
believe it or not we are actually pitching to mozilla to solve this
problem for them and they are taking us pretty seriously although no
word yet. so, its got to be a pretty huge issue if they come to us to
solve it right ;)

so...at the moment you need to manage it a little manually mostly
because we do not have page-break-after:avoid control as it is not
supported by webkit or gecko...we are doing what we can to fix it (as
per above) and additionally doug had an idea to hack divs around
specific elements to help them stick together.... neither of us liked
that since it is a hack and not the right way to do it at all. however,
perhaps we can add it as a hacky option - something like a opt-in for
"add divs around h2 and h3"...then they would stick together 

however, i do not think it will be soon when page breaks form nicely
around paragraphs automagically. default behaviours do as good as they
can but are never as good as manually tweaking. thats why people are
designers and machines arent. so you will have to manually juggle
paragraph breaks to make them break nicely. remember, this is also what
Desktop Publishing entails..all this manual control. we dont want this
paradigm...we want to be fast and nimble and at the same time we want to
get a reasonable default - but I am not sure we can, nor do i think its
necessarily the right approach, to consider that this method will 'make
everything perfect'...its a different process, and there might just be a
line where you either accept some nuances but saviour the fact you get
all the other advantages of an amazing online collaborative tool set, or
choose to :
1. do some manual tweaks or
2. quit and do it in DTP.

> 
> 3).  The style sheet for the web version of an FM should treat
> preformatted text like the PDF does.  Right now if a line is too long
> on the web it wraps to the next line, but in the PDF it gets
> truncated.  If the text was truncated in pretty much the same place on
> the web as it would be in the PDF with the default PRE font (Courier
> 12 pts please) then code examples could be formatted on the web and it
> would be reasonably likely that they would be good in the PDF
> generated with the default styles.

we can get things close but i dont think we will get everything 100% the
same (see acos notes from earlier today) ... but i take your point that
it would be nice to get more clarity via the web interface on how
elements will work in pdf

> 
> On my second book I have the services of a talented artist and people
> who are really interested in book design.  On MYOSA I didn't have that
> and didn't think I would need it.  I was hoping that OBJAVI would be
> like LyX, where you don't really get to design how your pages will
> look but they come out looking great anyway.

well, LyX is latex and thats a whole other ball game. I think James you
need to let go of that paradigm a little. We are not Latex, we are a
collaborative fast moving online environment focusing on simple easy to
use tools, sociability, collaboration and output of good looking books
in multiple formats _quickly_. write, publish, write, publish...some FM
books I have 're-published' 10-15 times in one day as updates came to
hand. re-published after updates came in from all around the world and
re-published in _both_ html form and book form...that is not Latex, that
is something else all together...(in my opinion the books also looked
pretty good)

but i take your points, mainly i think we can improve the defaults, but
also as i mentioned before, we need a better interface for determining
css options for publishing...

so...thanks thanks thanks for all the points. we will get there and make
you happier ;) and i hope with your feedback and keeping people like you
onboard we can get there quicker :)

adam

> 
> James Simmons
> 
> 
> 
> On Mon, Aug 30, 2010 at 11:42 AM, adam hyde <adam at flossmanuals.net> wrote:
> > okedoke....
> >
> >
> > so, the series of challenge posts asking for help with css, python, js
> > etc has been really super. we have solved a lot of things this way with
> > advice and help from the community (thats you :)
> >
> > so...big big thanks to everyone that has come to the assistance of booki
> > through these mails :)
> >
> > so...i thought i would take this a step further and put rather a bigger
> > challenge on the table. I have stepped back and observed how Booki has
> > been used for pdf design - seeing how people (ie. Mushon and the RDC)
> > are solving these issues. There has been some pretty cool things come
> > out of this. Mushon in particular has been very active on the dev list
> > (http://lists.flossmanuals.net/listinfo.cgi/booki-dev-flossmanuals.net)
> > and helped us work out a lot of issues AND he has made some big strides
> > forward with experimenting with CSS and book design using Booki/Objavi
> >
> > RDC and James are also doing great exploratory work in this area as you
> > have seen through the posts to the list.
> >
> > One thing that strikes me, is that I think we need to consider providing
> > an interface to assist people design pdf using the booki export tab...
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