Message-ID: <4B7EA23A.1000705@archonet.com>
Date: Fri, 19 Feb 2010 14:37:46 +0000
From: Richard Huxton <dev@archonet.com>
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To: pgsql-docs@postgresql.org
CC: Andrew Dunstan <andrew@dunslane.net>
Subject: RFC - Navigation menu for documents (2nd attempt)
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Previous copy of this hasn't appeared, presumably because of the 
attachment (under 8KB but tar.gz). Link to attachment below:

http://www.archonet.com/pg_js_manual.tgz


Andrew Dunstan mentioned a folding table-of-contents facility for the 
manuals some time ago. I've had a few minutes to tweak my last attempt 
and I think it's time to decide what to do with it.

Objectives:
- Make it easier to navigate our (now very long) manual
- Make it easier to provide links on the mailing-lists (my bugbear)
- Not get in the way if not wanted

Features:
- Contents panel on LHS, can slide off screen if wanted
- Automatically slid off screen on narrow displays
- Nested tree controls
- Automatically opens tree to currently displayed page
- Search-box displayed on A-Z index page (below contents box)
    I'm surprised at how much better this is than Ctrl+F
- Mailing-list links next to each heading
    So you can right-click+copy the url to the "master" copy of the docs

Dependencies:
- local (writable) copy of the html docs
- Perl for installation
- wget for installation
- jquery (fetched using wget, MIT licence)
- Assumes developer (cvs) version of docs
    See lines 115/6 of html/contents.js if you want to reference the 8.4 
docs

Installation:
cd /dir/above/html/docs
tar -xzf pg_js_manual.tgz
./bin/INSTALL

Testing:
- Firefox 3.6
- Internet Explorer 7
- Safari (4?)
- Opera 9
- Sluggish on a phone, but fine on a 5-year old laptop
- Obvious optimisations done - not sure there's much more to be gained

Where do we go from here?
1. We can make use of some/all of this on the main site.
2. Add it as a contrib/ project
3. Put it on pgfoundry

I'll probably do #3 anyway in case someone else is interested in working 
on it.

-- 
    Richard Huxton
    Archonet Ltd