7.4 official docs : Fonts?

People,

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.

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

On Wed, 2003-11-19 at 15:10, Josh Berkus wrote:

People,

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.

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?

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

[sNip]

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

[sNip]

Whatever we had in 7.3 we should switch back to:

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 - rr@8x.ca
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.

Josh Berkus writes:

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.

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 peter_e@gmx.net

Peter Eisentraut writes:

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

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.

This page puts the discrepancies in words:

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

--
Peter Eisentraut peter_e@gmx.net

On Thursday, November 20, 2003, at 05:10 AM, Josh Berkus wrote:

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?

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

Michael Glaesemann wrote:

On Thursday, November 20, 2003, at 05:10 AM, Josh Berkus wrote:

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?

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

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

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

On Thursday, November 20, 2003, at 12:56 PM, Bruce Momjian wrote:

Michael Glaesemann wrote:

On Thursday, November 20, 2003, at 05:10 AM, Josh Berkus wrote:

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?

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

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

Michael Glaesemann wrote:

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

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.

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

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

On Friday, November 21, 2003, at 01:36 AM, Bruce Momjian wrote:

Michael Glaesemann wrote:

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

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.

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

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

Michael Glaesemann wrote:

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.

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

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

On Thu, Nov 20, 2003 at 12:16:58PM -0500, Bruce Momjian wrote:

Michael Glaesemann wrote:

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.

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!!!!!!!!

On Friday, November 21, 2003, at 02:31 AM, Roberto Mello wrote:

On Thu, Nov 20, 2003 at 12:16:58PM -0500, Bruce Momjian wrote:

Michael Glaesemann wrote:

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.

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.

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.

On Friday, November 21, 2003, at 02:16 AM, Bruce Momjian wrote:

Yes, colorizing editors really help me understand the code. I use
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

Michael Glaesemann <grzm@myrealbox.com> writes:

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.

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

Guys,

color, and I'd rather not use pink unless everyone else thinks it's a
good idea.)

Nooooo! pink on white == totally illegible

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.

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

On Friday, November 21, 2003, at 02:49 AM, Josh Berkus wrote:

Guys,

color, and I'd rather not use pink unless everyone else thinks it's
a
good idea.)

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...)

Yeah. In Kate (with the PostgreSQL plug-in) I frequently wait until
I'm done
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?

Le Jeudi 20 Novembre 2003 16:36, Bruce Momjian a écrit :

Michael Glaesemann wrote:

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

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.

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

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/ -->.

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

-----Original Message-----
From: Josh Berkus [mailto:josh@agliodbs.com]
Sent: 20 November 2003 17:49
To: Roberto Mello; Bruce Momjian
Cc: Michael Glaesemann; pgsql-www@postgresql.org;
pgsql-docs@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: [pgsql-www] [DOCS] 7.4 official docs : Fonts?

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.

We have the basics in place in pgAdmin (it handles SQL quite happily).
Just need a suitable lexer for pl/pgsql for use with the Scintilla
Styled Text Control that we use.

Regards, Dave.