FTP FAQ document standards (was: Re: [ntp:questions] Re: Trimble Setup Question)

David J Taylor david-taylor at blueyonder.co.uk
Mon Sep 1 14:38:45 UTC 2003


> > To me the colours are garish.
>
> When using "w3m" in a GNOME terminal, I see no colors at all. Anyway
> let me quote from the document you quoted:
>
> 1.5.1. I don't like the look of the FAQ. What can I do?
>
> You are lucky: Actually the source of the FAQ uses no formatting rules
at all,
> even the DSSSL code relies on HTML classes and style sheets to do the
> rendering. All properties like borders, colours, and font attributes are
taken
> from a cascading style sheet (CSS).
>
> In practice, this means you don't have to change the HTML source to
change the
> appearance. Instead simply provide your favourite user style sheet to do
the
> formatting. If you prefer no fancy attributes at all, just empty the
> docbook.css file.[2]
>

Sorry, but I don't buy this - I think the document should look better
_without_ me having to create my own style sheets or whatever!  I would
recommend viewing (at least once) on Netscape or MS Internet Explorer.
It's bad enough on MS IE (in my opinion) but on Netscape 4.7 it is
appalling!


> > The first two words have different colours - and that's in the title!
The
> > title itself has three different colours and a mixture of italics and
> > plain letters in five words.  Doesn't this look gross to you?
>
> I'd call it "uncommon". You are referring to
> <title>The &NTP; &FAQ; and <phrase>HOWTO</phrase></title>
>
> where "NTP" and "FAQ" are entity definitions like this:
> <!entity FAQ "<abbrev>FAQ</abbrev>">
> <!entity NTP "<abbrev>NTP</abbrev>">
>
> So both, NTP and FAQ are abbreviations, while HOWTO is a phrase. The
> rest are fill words of the title.
>
> I think a CSS guru can make a stylesheet that ignores formatting
> directives within class "TITLE".

Again, I don't buy this.  To me, the result is a mess, for whatever
reason, and it should be fixed.  I should _not_ have to write my own style
sheets to read the supplied documentation, the style sheets supplied
should make the document appear "reasonable" on the browsers in common
use.

Cheers,
David





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