Subject: 7.4 official docs : Fonts?

From: elein <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 21:03:41 -0800

Have the fonts gone wild in the new 7.4 documentation?

In the tables describing the functions and
operators and in the table of contents,
there are at least three different fonts
of varied sizes. The usage for different types
of objects seems to be fairly consistent,
however, the varied sizes of the different fonts
make things very hard to read.

Is there anything I or someone can do to help this problem?

elein

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From: Josh Berkus <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 12:10:34 -0800

People,

> make things very hard to read.

Elein is correct, our variety of styles does look odd and can cause issues 
with readability.    See, for example, 
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/functions-string.html

Can we experiment with different SGML-to-HMTL font styles to find one that's a 
little easier on the eyes?   What I find particularly difficult are the 
function parameter columns; the mix of "normal" italics with "bold" italics.

Comments?  Responses?

-- 
-Josh Berkus
 Aglio Database Solutions
 San Francisco

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From: Robert Treat <[email-masked]>
Date: 19 Nov 2003 17:20:15 -0500

> function parameter columns; the mix of "normal" italics with "bold" italics.

Whatever we had in 7.3 we should switch back to:

http://www.postgresql.org/docs/7.3/static/functions-string.html

Robert Treat
-- 
Build A Brighter Lamp :: Linux Apache {middleware} PostgreSQL

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From: "Randolf Richardson, DevNet SysOp 29" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 22:38:12 +0000 (UTC)

[sNip]
>> http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/functions-string.html
[sNip]
> http://www.postgresql.org/docs/7.3/static/functions-string.html

    	I think the fancy fonts should be abandonded altogether in favour of 
using the web browser's default fonts.  In Opera, the text on both of those 
page (quoted above) are difficult to read because the choice of font is 
horrible.

-- 
Randolf Richardson - [email-masked]
Inter-Corporate Computer & Network Services, Inc.
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
http://www.8x.ca/

This message originated from within a secure, reliable,
high-performance network ... a Novell NetWare network.

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From: Peter Eisentraut <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 00:12:59 +0100 (CET)

> function parameter columns; the mix of "normal" italics with "bold" italics.

Compare with the "original" version:

http://developer.postgresql.org/docs/postgres/functions-string.html

That looks fairly reasonable to me.  So the problem appears to be in the
CSS stylesheets.

-- 
Peter Eisentraut   [email-masked]

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From: Peter Eisentraut <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 01:10:18 +0100 (CET)

> That looks fairly reasonable to me.  So the problem appears to be in the

This page puts the discrepancies in words:

http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/notation.html

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From: Michael Glaesemann <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 11:58:48 +0900

> function parameter columns; the mix of "normal" italics with "bold" 

As Peter has pointed out, the CSS can handle a lot of it. It doesn't 
have to be hardcoded into the SGML-to-HTML transformation. One option 
would be to use colors as well (I'm not talking a rainbow of fruit 
flavors here :). In particular, I find italics often difficult to read 
on the web. I'll try to get a few styles worked up by tomorrow that 
could just be added to the css file—we can change the actual structure 
of the HTML later.

Michael

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From: Bruce Momjian <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2003 22:56:26 -0500 (EST)

> on the web. I'll try to get a few styles worked up by tomorrow that 

I think it is the monospace italics that really look bad.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian                        |  http://candle.pha.pa.us
  [email-masked]               |  (610) 359-1001
  +  If your life is a hard drive,     |  13 Roberts Road
  +  Christ can be your backup.        |  Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073

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From: Michael Glaesemann <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 14:11:42 +0900

> I think it is the monospace italics that really look bad.

I'd have to agree with you. Making them a color other than the text 
(black) or the links (blue/purple depending on your eyes) would set 
them off quite well. Serif fonts at small sizes can also be pretty 
nasty, though this isn't an issue with the PostgreSQL docs.

Michael

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From: Bruce Momjian <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 11:36:19 -0500 (EST)

> nasty, though this isn't an issue with the PostgreSQL docs.

If we go with color, making them printable on a non-color printer
becomes a problem.

---

From: Michael Glaesemann <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2003 01:51:13 +0900

> If we go with color, making them printable on a non-color printer

Good point. A way to handle this is to use an additional style sheet 
for media="print" that distinguishes between the 
keywords/parameters/functions in a different way. If we make any 
changes to how syntax is represented, the conventions page will need to 
be rewritten, and an option would be to rewrite it in a way that does 
not explicitly spell out the differences (e.g., "italics ( example ) 
indicate placeholders; "), but rather present a table or an example 
showing the different parts. This way the style sheets will always be 
in congruence with the notation explanation.

Just an idea. I think it's good to have some redundancy in 
distinguishing these things. Not only for those without color printers 
(poor souls ;) but also for people who have trouble distinguishing 
color differences.

When I was experimenting with different color schemes, I thought about 
perhaps matching the syntax coloring of my editor, BBEdit. However, I'm 
sure not all editors use the same color scheme (the ANSI SQL language 
module for BBEdit displays only blue (keywords), pink (strings), and 
black (everything else). The blue would conflict with the current link 
color, and I'd rather not use pink unless everyone else thinks it's a 
good idea.) I'm interested in hearing what editors others use for 
coding, and what syntax coloring schemes they use for SQL.

Michael

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From: Bruce Momjian <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 12:16:58 -0500 (EST)

> coding, and what syntax coloring schemes they use for SQL.

Yes, colorizing editors really help me understand the code.  I use
Crisp, which is a commercial editor.

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From: Roberto Mello <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 10:31:08 -0700

> > coding, and what syntax coloring schemes they use for SQL.

I use vim, it has good SQL coloring syntax. The one problem that I'd like
to fix in it is that the body of PL/pgSQL functions are shown as a big
string.

-Roberto

-- 
+----|        Roberto Mello   -    http://www.brasileiro.net/  |------+
+       Computer Science Graduate Student, Utah State University      +
+       USU Free Software & GNU/Linux Club - http://fslc.usu.edu/     +
YES!!  eh, NO!!! oh, well  MAYBE!!!!!!!!

---

From: Michael Glaesemann <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2003 02:43:23 +0900

> to fix in it is that the body of PL/pgSQL functions are shown as a big

I know what  you mean. Same thing in BBEdit. Really, that's what they 
are, but it'd be nice if there were some way of distinguishing the 
parts of the strings. One of the issues is that (at least for BBEdit) 
the SQL syntax coloring is based on ANSI SQL, not PostgreSQL. I'd like 
to hack my own language module for this, but haven't got around to 
doing it.

> Crisp, which is a commercial editor.
Visiting the CRiSP site, I see they have a Mac version for demo. I'll 
give it a whirl, and see what their colors are like.

Michael

---

From: Tom Lane <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 12:48:10 -0500

> (poor souls ;) but also for people who have trouble distinguishing 

Yes.  I don't have an objection to using color, but it has to be in
addition to a font difference, not a substitute for a font difference.

			regards, tom lane

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From: Josh Berkus <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 09:49:01 -0800

Guys,

> > > good idea.)

Nooooo!   pink on white == totally illegible

> to fix in it is that the body of PL/pgSQL functions are shown as a big

Yeah.  In Kate (with the PostgreSQL plug-in) I frequently wait until I'm done 
writing the procedure to quote it.   What we could really use is a postgresql 
function editor with syntax highlighting, perhaps as a bonus to pgAdmin or 
pgAccess.

-- 
Josh Berkus
Aglio Database Solutions
San Francisco

---

From: Michael Glaesemann <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2003 02:59:40 +0900

>>>> color, and I'd rather not use pink unless everyone else thinks it's 

Yes, Josh, I *am* your father.

> Nooooo!

(Sorry ;)

>  pink on white == totally illegible

Tell me about it! (Guess I could just make a little trip to preferences 
to change it...)

> writing the procedure to quote it.

Nice to hear there are PostgreSQL-specific plug-ins out there. I assume 
it picks up the additional PostgreSQL keywords?

---

From: Guillaume LELARGE <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 19:14:53 +0000

> If we go with color, making them printable on a non-color printer
This is not totaly true.

You can have alternate stylesheets depending on the media : on colorized for 
screen, one black and white for printer. Latest releases of current browers 
(mozilla, ie6) are able to handle these tags :
  <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="2columnspg.css" media="screen"
    title="TwoColumn">
  <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="printpg.css" media="print">

Adding a title make them available for stylesheet switching in the browser 
(mozilla).

-- 
Guillaume
  <!-- http://absfr.tuxfamily.org/
       http://pgsql-fr.tuxfamily.org/ -->.

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From: elein <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 13:55:01 -0800

It is *much* more important to have legible black and
white text than it is to introduce colors.

Don't run off track with the colors--it would be a bonus
extra.  Also, wrt colors, it is important to choose
colors in a way that handle color blindness.  I had
a great URL on this that I can't find right now,
but the topic is google-able. 

Also, especially since not everyone sees the same
colors, you will *never* agree on syntax colors.
(That is why I inevitably edit my vim syntax files.)

--elein

On Thu, Nov 20, 2003 at 07:14:53PM +0000, Guillaume LELARGE wrote:
> ---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
> TIP 9: the planner will ignore your desire to choose an index scan if your
>       joining column's datatypes do not match

---

From: "Henry B. Hotz" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2003 00:33:16 -0800

>nasty, though this isn't an issue with the PostgreSQL docs.

Color works well on-screen with html.  Small-point-size italics are 
hard to read on-screen, agreed.

Italics work well on B&W printout with PDF.  (In general.  I'm not 
looking at the specific example.)

Can you map things somehow to get the best of both worlds?
-- 
The opinions expressed in this message are mine,
not those of Caltech, JPL, NASA, or the US Government.
[email-masked], or [email-masked]

---

From: Michael Glaesemann <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2003 19:30:49 +0900

> Can you map things somehow to get the best of both worlds?

If you're talking about printing from the browser, you can have 
separate style sheets with different media targets, so media="screen" 
could have the color, while media="print" could have italics. It's 
really flexible. At work I have a form letter that's generated on 
screen, and includes all of the navigation for moving around the site. 
When you print the page, the media="print" style sheet omits the 
navigation, restyles the page with different fonts and sizes, and adds 
the number we want to fax it to (Yes, I know. We still use fax for a 
large part of our interoffice correspondence. I'm trying to move us 
away from that, but it's a hard slog.)

As for the PDF docs, they're formatting is indeed different. I assume 
that the SGML to PDF path is different from the SGML to HTML path 
(which is of course one of the benefits of using SGML).

Is this what you mean?

Michael

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From: "Henry B. Hotz" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2003 02:40:39 -0800

At 7:30 PM +0900 11/28/03, Michael Glaesemann wrote:
>separate style sheets with different media targets, so 
>media="screen" could have the color, while media="print" could have 
>italics. It's really flexible. At work I have a form letter that's 
>generated on screen, and includes all of the navigation for moving 
>around the site. When you print the page, the media="print" style 
>sheet omits the navigation, restyles the page with different fonts 
>and sizes, and adds the number we want to fax it to (Yes, I know. We 
>still use fax for a large part of our interoffice correspondence. 
>I'm trying to move us away from that, but it's a hard slog.)
>
>As for the PDF docs, they're formatting is indeed different. I 
>assume that the SGML to PDF path is different from the SGML to HTML 
>path (which is of course one of the benefits of using SGML).
>
>Is this what you mean?

Pretty much, yes.  I don't care much about printing html.  If I want 
to print I figure I'm better off getting a PDF.

I just don't want to have to use a color printer.
-- 
The opinions expressed in this message are mine,
not those of Caltech, JPL, NASA, or the US Government.
[email-masked], or [email-masked]

---

From: Randolf Richardson <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2003 21:06:00 +0000 (UTC)

[sNip]
> to print I figure I'm better off getting a PDF.

    	I prefer to print from PDF also because the formatting is always 
perfect.  Unfortunately this just hasn't been the case with any other format, 
including HTML, WordPerfect (and those horrid Microsoft Word) documents, and 
even plain old text files.

    	At least with PDF this problem has been solved.

> I just don't want to have to use a color printer.

    	When I'm reading large amounts of text on paper, black text is my 
preference because so many people just pick the wrong colours (and pretty 
much everyone has different tastes and expectations in this regard).

Please do not eMail me directly when responding
to my postings in the newsgroups.