Thorsten Froehlich <tho### [at] trfde> wrote:
> Why?  Because this kind of layout hurts readability more than it helps!

  Did you read my text about using and misusing? You are exaggerating, as
people always do in this kind of flamewars: When I say that you could use
a color to distinguish keywords from the rest of the text, you immediately
jump with exaggerations about "20+ colors". That tactic is old and cheap,
and convinces no-one.

  I disagree with you: When used well, fonts and colors are a great aid to
read text (the fact that this can be misused does not invalidate this fact).
  On the contrary: Text with no distinction about different types of
elements can be harder to read and understand (note that I didn't say
"is always"; don't start to exaggerate again, please).

> And do works of Shakespeare, Joyce or Orwell require more than a simple
> font, maybe a italics version of it and a bit indenting to outline very
> complex stories?

  No, because they don't need to. They are stories, not technical specs.
People don't read them to find something specific; they just read the
whole text from beginning to end, and everything is equally important
and thus doesn't need special emphasis.
  (And as you said: They do use layout, such as italics and indenting.)

>  Do papers by Einstein or Newton require fancy layout to
> express their ideas?

  Absolutely yes. Mathematical formulae have a clear layout in order to
be easy to read and understand and to clearly differentiate them from the
rest of the text. The layout of mathematical formulae is very fancy
(because you can't get it with eg. a typewriter).
  When you are looking for a certain formula in they papers, it's easy
because of the layout.

> So if some of the most brilliant people did not require advanced layout to
> make their ideas known on the planet

  But they did. Imagine that the formulae in Einstein's paper would have
been written in ascii in C style...

> why does a little web page need it for
> much less important information? -- Because the little content a web page
> has is so unimportant compared to their work, it has to be made appear more
> than it is!

  If layout makes the page more readable and makes finding things easier,
I see no reason to not to use it.
  Again, it's not about being fancy, it's about helping the reader.

  (It seems to me that you think that every time someone defines some
layout property in a web-page, the only and sole purpose for it is to
make the page fancier, not to help the reader to understand the text.
I couldn't disagree more.)

  I am completely read to make a test:
  I can make two versions of the Q&T pages, one as it's currently and
another with no CSS and all of your "layout" tags removed (ie. <i>, <b> etc).
Then we can make a poll about which version do people prefer.

  On the other hand, why bother? Why both know the answer already.
  But this would demonstrate one point: According to you it's best for
the readers to have the pages with no layout definitions. The votes would
certainly prove the contrary.
  (Well, let me guess: Most of the people are stupid, and only a very few
enlightened people know what is the best thing to have... ;) )

-- 
#macro M(A,N,D,L)plane{-z,-9pigment{mandel L*9translate N color_map{[0rgb x]
[1rgb 9]}scale<D,D*3D>*1e3}rotate y*A*8}#end M(-3<1.206434.28623>70,7)M(
-1<.7438.1795>1,20)M(1<.77595.13699>30,20)M(3<.75923.07145>80,99)// - Warp -

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Ken wrote:
> 
> Warp wrote:
> 
>>Xplo Eristotle <xpl### [at] infomagicnet> wrote:
>>
>>>As the content creator, it is MY right to decide how my content is to be
>>>presented.
>>
>>  I agree with this (even though I perhaps would have worder the rest of
>>the paragraph more nicely... :) ).
> 
> 
> With regard to the VFAQ page the content is not, strictly speaking, entirely
> all yours. Many of us have contributed to the content of the page. Along
> with those contributions it was always presumed that the content would be
> displayed in such a manner that every POV-Ray user could benefit from that
> content without the handicap of browser dependent authoring restrictions.
> I appreciate you making the compromise you did for the sake of the VFAQ and
> welcome you to present the rest of your site however you wish.
> 
> When I make criticisms about peoples design decisions on POV-Ray websites I
> only do so because I care about the POV-Ray community and their accessibility
> to resources and information that can help them in their quest to become
> better users of the program. If you think I put in all the time and effort
> on my links collection for my own sake you are mistaken. I could easily pare
> it down to a hundred or so sites I might frequent and dump the rest. I put
> in that time and effort for the sake of the POV-Ray community and will continue
> doing so for as long as I can. If I were to compromise that effort by putting
> all of the links in a browser dependent CSS script then I wouldn't be doing my
> job and at least part of the community would suffer as a result. That would
> be unconscionable to me. That is pretty much the point that Thorsten and I
> have been arguing from the beginning but people in this tread have been unable
> to see.

I agree with it being undesirable to have the VFAQ site implement browser
dependent CSS (or anything browser dependent for that matter). That's why I
commented in another thread that the compromise Warp made was a good 
thing, just
as you did in your 1st paragraph above.

However, Thorsten seems to be against CSS, or any layout related 
commands, on
general principle. Even if the layout commands are browser independent, 
he still
doesn't like it. Actually, from his posts in this thread I'd guess he 
hates it
with an extreme passion ;)

> In 5 years or so when everyone has had a chance to upgrade to comparable
> software then these problems will likely go away. In the mean time it is
> important to recognize them and if at all possible make allowances for these
> differences.
> 

And in 5 years there'll be a bunch of new ways of presenting web pages 
that'll
cause some more angst ;)

Again, I do agree with you about the allowances... it doesn't do any good to
lock out a bunch of your site visitors. However, if there's tools that make
the site more pleasant for the visitors then I think it's also good to
explore them and try to strike a balance between the web designer's vision
and the current state of the browsers in use.

-Roz

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Thorsten Froehlich <tho### [at] trfde> wrote:
>>   Think about the different "structure" elements in HTML.
>>   For example <H1> means "header level 1". What does the word "header" mean?
>> Does it mean that it should be printed with a really small font at the
>> footer of the page, perhaps?

> It could mean anything.

  No, it couldn't. It means "header level 1", or "top level header" (ie.
it's not under any other higher-priority header).
  It does not mean "paragraph", nor "footnote", nor "quote". It means "header"
and nothing else.
  The fact that it's a structural element does not mean that it has no
meaning at all: All the contrary, it's this fact that implies that it
has a meaning. If it didn't have any meaning, it wouldn't be a structural
element. Interpreting it as something else than a header would break
the structure.

>  When you print a HTML pahe on paper, a new page
> could for example start with every h1 tag.

  This is a minor difference. Regardless of whether it starts in a new
page or not, it should still be a *header*, not something else (eg.
a footnote). You are affecting the layout by specifying that it's a header.
If you had used another tag (eg. <p>), the layout would be completely
different, and the meaning of the text inside the tags would be different.

> But ask yourself what does it mean if someone reads it to you (ignore the
> visual element)?
>  The a header is nothing more than a pause between to
> longer sections of text being read to you.

  But this is just a question of what is possible to represent with the
available media. I don't see how it is pertinent to the current issue.
  Besides, in spoken language a pause can be thought as layout. You affected
the layout by making that piece of text a header and not plain text or
a footnote.

>  Does it mean it has to appear in
> "Helvetica bold 20 pixel height"?  No, it eams "this is a new section and
> here is an outline what will follow in a few words".  What is the more
> important part?  the fact that the text is "Helvetica bold 20 pixel height",
> or what it says?  The answer is clear, I hope...

  And what is so bad if the author would want you to see the header
as "Helvetica bold 20 pixel height"? If the author thinks that that makes
his work look better and nicer, then why not?

> Well, why do you want to disallow users to configure their display such that
> <h1> is rendered in a three pixel size font?

  I don't think CSS disallows users from doing that (at least not any more
than plain HTML does).
  You are still speaking about forcing, while that's not the issue at all.
You can't force anything with CSS. The issue here is helping.

-- 
#macro N(D)#if(D>99)cylinder{M()#local D=div(D,104);M().5,2pigment{rgb M()}}
N(D)#end#end#macro M()<mod(D,13)-6mod(div(D,13)8)-3,10>#end blob{
N(11117333955)N(4254934330)N(3900569407)N(7382340)N(3358)N(970)}//  - Warp -

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"Thorsten Froehlich" <tho### [at] trfde> wrote in message
news:3d740b71@news.povray.org...
> In article <3d74082e@news.povray.org> , "Pandora"
> <pan### [at] pandora-softwarecom> wrote:
>
> >     Which is why I asked you to give us _your_ definition of "structure"
and
> > "layout" - you're clearly reading some important difference into the two
> > that I, at least, don't see.
> >     Again, would your care to give us _your_ definitions ? And, this
time,
> > don't just post links - give us _your_ definitions.
>
> I already did.  Twice!
>


    Well, I'm after concise definitions, in a single location, of your
definitions so that I can directly answer each point you raise in one go,
rather than having to address each point on a case by case basis.

    Ok, here are my definitions :

    First let me introduce a new term - "Style" :

Style.
    The physical attributes of words, images, tables or other content within
a document. For example, the text color, font or text size used, and so on.

Structure.
    The logical composition of the various elements of content with in a
document. For example, the splitting of a long document in to sections,
pages and so on.

Layout.
    Now, this is where the issue is, I feel. In my mind layout falls
somewhere between Style and Structure. For example, the term "Layout" used
as a heading for this paragraph indicates that this paragraph is a separate
element within this post, labelled "Layout" - from this point of view a
heading is a structural element marking the beginning of a distinct block of
content. However, one could argue that "Layout" also includes "Style", for
example, if this were rich-text, rather than just plain-text I could have
made the word "Layout" bold and underlined - from this point of view a
heading can be seen as a stylistic element.
    I think the whole issue behind this whole argument is that you see
"Layout" as being more akin with "Style", whereas myself and Warp see
"Layout" as being more akin with "Structure" - with the "Style" part of
"Layout" being optional.

    It all comes down to where you personally feel "Layout" fits into this
picture. As I said above, Warp and I see the structural elements of "Layout"
as being the more important, whereas, I think, you see the "Style" elements
of "Layout" as being more important, yes ?

--
Pandora/Scott Hill/[::O:M:C::]Scorpion
Software Engineer.
http://www.pandora-software.com

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Ken <tyl### [at] pacbellnet> wrote:
> I appreciate you making the compromise you did for the sake of the VFAQ and
> welcome you to present the rest of your site however you wish.

  When you first reported with the problems viewing the pages with N4,
I was already ready to make the necessary modifications in order to make
the pages work, if you remember, even thought I didn't consider it a too high
priority task, and I didn't want to compromise the layout more than
necessary. At that time, however, I didn't know what was the exact
problem and how it could be solved. I afterwards made some investigation
and found an acceptable solution to the problem (w3.org was a great help
in this).
  However, what triggered the flamewar was that I got some comments which
were more or less of type "your new pages suck!". This made me angry,
which caused lots of heated discussion and opinions, some of them a bit
too exaggerated. After all, I had made quite some efforts to finally
update the look of the Q&T pages so that they would be easier and nicer
for the users to read and browse.
  It was not my intention to start such a flamewar. It's just that when
someone despises something that is important to me and that I have made
with effort, I often lose my temper.

-- 
#macro N(D)#if(D>99)cylinder{M()#local D=div(D,104);M().5,2pigment{rgb M()}}
N(D)#end#end#macro M()<mod(D,13)-6mod(div(D,13)8)-3,10>#end blob{
N(11117333955)N(4254934330)N(3900569407)N(7382340)N(3358)N(970)}//  - Warp -

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Warp wrote:
> 
> Ken <tyl### [at] pacbellnet> wrote:
> > I appreciate you making the compromise you did for the sake of the VFAQ and
> > welcome you to present the rest of your site however you wish.
> 
>   When you first reported with the problems viewing the pages with N4,

Actually it looked bad in both N4 and IE6. IE6 is supposed to be CSS2
compliant and thus the reason I commented on it in the first place. It
appears that only the version of Mozzila that you are using was able to
render it correctly.

>   It was not my intention to start such a flamewar. It's just that when
> someone despises something that is important to me and that I have made
> with effort, I often lose my temper.

Have a nice cold beer (or other beverage of your choice) and let the flame
burn out.

-- 
Ken Tyler

Post a reply to this message

Ken wrote:
> 
> In 5 years or so when everyone has had a chance to upgrade to comparable
> software then these problems will likely go away. In the mean time it is
> important to recognize them and if at all possible make allowances for these
> differences.

Five years ago, I would have agreed with you.

-Xplo

Post a reply to this message

In article <3d740d29@news.povray.org> , Xplo Eristotle <xpl### [at] infomagicnet>
wrote:

>> If you prefer arguing over the obvious, go to
>> kindergarten, it is the right place to do so.
>>
>> As far as I am concerned, killfiles are useful...
>
> Thank you for forfeiting the argument. I must ask you, as a matter of
> protocol, that you cease to post in this thread, since you are clearly
> wrong and have nothing more to contribute. Continuing to argue a point
> you have lost would only make you a troll.

I do not care what you think or claim, but if you call me a troll, maybe you
should review your history of posts.  If that is within your ability to see
your pointless insults, that is.

I am free to choose to argue with whom I want, and I simply do not argue
with you any more because you constantly side-track the discussion, start
cheap personal attacks and the like.  So I ignore your arguments, if you
construct something out of it that is not the thruth i have other means to
stop you, remember that!

As you notice I am continuing the discussion with everybody else who is able
to keep the discussion out of the personal area.

    Thorsten

____________________________________________________
Thorsten Froehlich, Duisburg, Germany
e-mail: tho### [at] trfde

Visit POV-Ray on the web: http://mac.povray.org

Post a reply to this message

In article <3d740ed7@news.povray.org> , Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg>  wrote:

>> Why?  Because this kind of layout hurts readability more than it helps!
>
>   Did you read my text about using and misusing? You are exaggerating, as
> people always do in this kind of flamewars: When I say that you could use
> a color to distinguish keywords from the rest of the text, you immediately
> jump with exaggerations about "20+ colors". That tactic is old and cheap,
> and convinces no-one.

Well, count the number of colors on your page.  There are really a lot.  If
you count on your page, there are alreday at least ten:

Every "button" consists of three, the background colors (two), the text
color, the link color, the followed link color, the section headers, the
separator color.

So, as you can see, even your fairly simple page has many colors.

>   Absolutely yes. Mathematical formulae have a clear layout in order to
> be easy to read and understand and to clearly differentiate them from the
> rest of the text. The layout of mathematical formulae is very fancy
> (because you can't get it with eg. a typewriter).
>   When you are looking for a certain formula in they papers, it's easy
> because of the layout.

Yes, mathemetical forumals use the same layout everywhere to convey their
structure.  They are a perfect example of structure turned into a specific
mostly universal layout everybody agrees upon.  They are a perfect example
how good layout should be:  To help follow the structure.  One could write
formulas by simply putting them in a long chains of words and numbers and
operators, but that would help nobody.  It would be much harder to find out
rules of precedence and such.  Yet it would still be possible.

>   But they did. Imagine that the formulae in Einstein's paper would have
> been written in ascii in C style...

Exactly!  Or imaggine anybody changing the layout of formulas.  You get a
mess.  Here we have the case where an almost perfect layout has been
developed by many people over centuries.  That is very different from
someone stitting down and saying: "Now I am going to invent the perfect
layout for my users".

>   I am completely read to make a test:
>   I can make two versions of the Q&T pages, one as it's currently and
> another with no CSS and all of your "layout" tags removed (ie. <i>, <b> etc).
> Then we can make a poll about which version do people prefer.

No, not remove.  You already mentioned how to do it correctly:  if you want
to emphazise something, use the em tag, if you want to make something stand
out, use the strong tag.  This way you separate layout from structure.

>   But this would demonstrate one point: According to you it's best for
> the readers to have the pages with no layout definitions. The votes would
> certainly prove the contrary.

No, you are still confusing layout and structure here.  You asked about the
tags before and I gave you the reference in the HTML 4.0 specification that
explained their difference:

Date: Tue, 03 Sep 2002 02:01:25 +0200
From: "Thorsten Froehlich" <tho### [at] trfde>
Newsgroups: povray.general
Subject: Re: povQ&T (aka. povVFAQ) new look
Message-ID: <3d73fbd6@news.povray.org>
Xref: news.povray.org povray.general:41833

>   (Well, let me guess: Most of the people are stupid, and only a very few
> enlightened people know what is the best thing to have... ;) )

No, but as you clearly show, most people did not even read the manual (HTML
4.0 specification, for example), but start doing web design.  If you make
mistakes using something because you did not read the manual, it is indeed
so that those who did read the manual will know more than those who did not.

    Thorsten

____________________________________________________
Thorsten Froehlich, Duisburg, Germany
e-mail: tho### [at] trfde

Visit POV-Ray on the web: http://mac.povray.org

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In article <3d7414d6@news.povray.org> , Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg>  wrote:

>> It could mean anything.
>
>   No, it couldn't. It means "header level 1", or "top level header" (ie.
> it's not under any other higher-priority header).
>   It does not mean "paragraph", nor "footnote", nor "quote". It means "header"
> and nothing else.

You quoted me out of context (again).  Usually paragraphs outline an idea,
not sentences:  "It could mean anything.  When you print a HTML page on
paper, a new page could for example start with every h1 tag."

It is very clear what i mean with "anything" is layout.  I did not say
structure.  That would not make sense as my second sentence made very clear.
So please do not rip sentences of mine out of context and then attack what I
said.

>>  When you print a HTML page on paper, a new page
>> could for example start with every h1 tag.
>
>   This is a minor difference. Regardless of whether it starts in a new
> page or not, it should still be a *header*, not something else (eg.
> a footnote). You are affecting the layout by specifying that it's a header.
> If you had used another tag (eg. <p>), the layout would be completely
> different, and the meaning of the text inside the tags would be different.

That is exactly what I am saying!  The structure tag h1 can be rendered in
many different layouts.  But you want control over the layout and thus you
imply you want tonctrol over where to put it.  I am arguing for the reader
to decide which layout he/she prefers.  Not more, not less.

>   And what is so bad if the author would want you to see the header
> as "Helvetica bold 20 pixel height"? If the author thinks that that makes
> his work look better and nicer, then why not?

Well, it might be one of any of these, in no particular order (!!!):

- The user does not have the font Helvetica
- The user scren resolution may not be sufficient to clearly see a
  difference between bold and normal text
- The user might be on a too small screen where 20 pixel height is too much

>> Well, why do you want to disallow users to configure their display such that
>> <h1> is rendered in a three pixel size font?
>
>   I don't think CSS disallows users from doing that (at least not any more
> than plain HTML does).
>   You are still speaking about forcing, while that's not the issue at all.
> You can't force anything with CSS. The issue here is helping.

Yes, that is indeed your intention.  The problem is that you fail to help
because of the way HTML is meant to be (not depend ona s specific layout),
but once you have a specific layout you also make assumptions based on the
layout you set.  Things like assuming a specific minimum width:

Take your page for example here.  What is its minimum width?  It is given by
the table that contains the navigation (thus misusing a table for layout).
You assume everybody will have a screen at least big enough that there will
be enough space next to the navigation bar to display the content.  But what
happens if you i.e. view the page one a handheld computer with a small
screen?  The layout you gave failed, and certain elements of it like the
navigation bar cannot be correctled by the user without loosing the ability
to navigate on the page.  On the other hand, had your layout not depended on
the specificc layout elements you have and instead focused on structure
along, this problem would not exist.

As you see in the example I gave, you made an assumption.  You always have
to make an assumption when you specify layout.  But why should you make an
assumption if the user reading it _knows_ the layout he/she needs?  in this
simple example this might just be the browser on the handheld device having
a default samller font size for headers and text, less space between
paragraphs and such.  But if you specify the layout and design assuming your
page will be displayed this way, and only this way, the layout you provide
breaks!


    Thorsten

____________________________________________________
Thorsten Froehlich, Duisburg, Germany
e-mail: tho### [at] trfde

Visit POV-Ray on the web: http://mac.povray.org

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