Web Design

Web Design

[M. R.P.]

what gnu tools are their for web design?

Re: Web Design

[Emanuel Berg]

M. R.P. wrote:

> what gnu tools are their for web design?

It depends what you mean by web design.
There are the GNU Emacs modes for HTML and CSS,
shell tools like GNU Wget and rsync to retrieve
and move around files, image tools like GIMP
(the GNU image manipulation program), and many,
many more.

-- 
underground experts united
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573

Re: Web Design

[Rusi]

On Saturday, December 30, 2017 at 7:17:15 AM UTC+5:30, Matthew Pritchard wrote:
> what gnu tools are their for web design?

If in “web design” the emphasis is on “design”
ie colors gradients fonts effects animations etc
I dont think there's much unfortunately

If the emphasis is on “web”, org mode is neat for allowing for clean
(ASCII!) prose which can be html-ized at one key stroke.
Thereafter there are some css-es floating around¹ that can even make it look ½-decent.

And from there even a little ‘publisher’ that allows a allows a
small web of linked org pages to be faithfully exported to suitably linked
html pages


¹ I filch mine from http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html
But do be careful before reading that page; it can fry the brain!

Re: Web Design

[Emanuel Berg]

Rusi wrote:

>> what gnu tools are their for web design?
>
> If in “web design” the emphasis is on
> “design” ie colors gradients fonts effects
> animations etc I dont think there's much
> unfortunately

You can do GIF "Internet animations" - as we
used to call them whenever anyone felt the need
to say he didn't like them - with GIMP.
There is even a YT tutorial [1] so it must be
true.

As for "colors gradients fonts" I don't know
exactly what that refers to but if you know the
Windows program for that (because I take it
they are somewhere, for you to say we don't
have them) - Google the name of the Windows
program with an appended "Linux equivalent" or
something to that extent.

Because, to be a guy with zero interest in web
design, I'm pretty sure the tools are
out there.

[1] https://www.elearnhub.org/how-to-make-an-animated-gif-in-gimp/

-- 
underground experts united
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573

Re: Web Design

[Rusi]

Jude DaShiell wrote:
> httpie may be helpful in this context too.  It's for people who really want to 
> get under the hood.

Looks interesting… though not sure if thats what the OP wants at this stage

PS Not sure why you sent that to me and not the list. Assuming it was 
unintentional, I am responding here

Re: Web Design

[Kendall Shaw]

On 12/29/2017 05:47 PM, M. R.P. wrote:
> what gnu tools are their for web design?
>
>
What does "gnu tools" mean? What does "web design" mean?

Kendall

Re: Web Design

[Emanuel Berg]

Kendall Shaw wrote:

> What does "gnu tools" mean? What does "web
> design" mean?

"GNU tools" are likely to mean the UNIX CLI
tools that were/are made available to everyone
free of charge thru the GNU project and other
such initiatives.

Many tools that today hold a GNU licence are
not UNIX tools historically, in the AT&T/Bell
sense, but may still relate to that tradition
or style/attitude of technology.

"Web design" is likely to mean "creating a web
page/service and make it look good" - "good",
in the eyes of certain beholders, that is.

-- 
underground experts united
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573

Re: Web Design

[MBR]

M.R.P.'s original request was: "what gnu tools are their for web design? "

If your interpretations of "GNU tools" and "web design", then the answer 
to the original question is likely "none".  If, as you speculated, "web 
design" means "creating a web page/service and make it look good", 
that's going to be awfully hard to do using just UTF-8 text.  To make it 
look good, you're going to need something that properly renders font and 
style changes as well as images.  I can't think of any command line 
tools that do that.

But I'm not so sure that command line tools are what M.R.P. is really 
asking for. Although he/she posted to an emacs discussion group, the 
reference to "GNU tools" suggests he/she's looking for something outside 
of emacs.  Perhaps the poster thinks gnu tools means non-proprietary.  
It's also unclear whether "web design" means strictly web design, or 
website building, or both.  In that case, both WordPress and Drupal 
would qualify, since they're licensed under the GPL and can be used to 
build websites.

The only person who knows what was really being asked for is M.R.P. 
him/her-self. And he/she's been notably silent since the first post 3 
days ago.

    Mark Rosenthal

On 1/1/18 4:55 PM, Emanuel Berg wrote:
> Kendall Shaw wrote:
>
>> What does "gnu tools" mean? What does "web
>> design" mean?
> "GNU tools" are likely to mean the UNIX CLI
> tools that were/are made available to everyone
> free of charge thru the GNU project and other
> such initiatives.
>
> Many tools that today hold a GNU licence are
> not UNIX tools historically, in the AT&T/Bell
> sense, but may still relate to that tradition
> or style/attitude of technology.
>
> "Web design" is likely to mean "creating a web
> page/service and make it look good" - "good",
> in the eyes of certain beholders, that is.
>

Re: Web Design

[Emanuel Berg]

MBR wrote:

> To make it look good, you're going to need
> something that properly renders font and
> style changes as well as images. I can't
> think of any command line tools that do that.

There are many CLI image, video, and audio
manipulation tools if you are into those kind
of web pages...

There are also HTML and CSS style checkers,
converters, spell checkers for the articles,
tools that identifies dead links, tools to
retrieve, update and/or push files, tools to
ping sites for availability, Emacs modes for
HTML, CSS, PHP, SQL, Perl, C (for CGI),
etc. etc.

-- 
underground experts united
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573

Re: Web Design

[Kendall Shaw]

On 01/01/2018 01:55 PM, Emanuel Berg wrote:
> Kendall Shaw wrote:
>
>> What does "gnu tools" mean? What does "web
>> design" mean?
> "GNU tools" are likely to mean the UNIX CLI
> tools that were/are made available to everyone
> free of charge thru the GNU project and other
> such initiatives.
>
> Many tools that today hold a GNU licence are
> not UNIX tools historically, in the AT&T/Bell
> sense, but may still relate to that tradition
> or style/attitude of technology.
>
> "Web design" is likely to mean "creating a web
> page/service and make it look good" - "good",
> in the eyes of certain beholders, that is.
>
Without know what was meant by those two things, it's hard to answer.

But, emacs at least seems to be in use actively by web developers in 
clojure/clojurescript and scala communities.

Kendall

Re: Web Design

[Emanuel Berg]

Kendall Shaw wrote:

> Without know what was meant by those two
> things, it's hard to answer.
>
> But, emacs at least seems to be in use
> actively by web developers in
> clojure/clojurescript and scala communities.

Of course there are FOSS and/or GNU tools for
web development!

When the Internet struck it big for the common
man the GNU people were either on Usenet (I
post this thru gnu.emacs.help BTW) *or* even
busy working on their own hypertext system, the
info files...

-- 
underground experts united
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573

re: web design

[Jude DaShiell]

html-tidy can certainly check web site grammar and perhaps repair it too. 
I write perhaps since I suspect it is entirely possible to write an html 
site so badly that not even html-tidy could repair the site.

One possible direction gnu tools might take in the future would be in 
terms of scripts first to install when necessary Linux tools and use those 
locally then send site files out for further checking and perhaps 
processing and collect those the external sites processed for the 
developers.  Multiple subdirectories with names of internal and external 
tools on them could hold the processed content as the content got 
processed and returned.  It would then be up to the site developers to 
review what was returned in each subdirectory to find if any of the 
processing tools made unacceptable errors.  html-tidy I consider a hybrid 
since the tool can check and slso repair web site files as opposed to 
w3cvalidator which so far as I know only checks web site files.  My nephew 
who could use Windows prefers Linux for his web development he does for 
other companies so if any of this starts happening I think he'll be very 
interested and may even be making some technical contributions sooner or 
later.



--

Re: web design

[Emanuel Berg]

Jude DaShiell wrote:

> One possible direction gnu tools might take
> in the future would be in terms of scripts
> first to install when necessary Linux tools
> and use those locally then send site files
> out for further checking and perhaps
> processing and collect those the external
> sites processed for the developers.
> Multiple subdirectories with names of
> internal and external tools on them could
> hold the processed content as the content got
> processed and returned. It would then be up
> to the site developers to review what was
> returned in each subdirectory to find if any
> of the processing tools made
> unacceptable errors.

Indeed, feel free to spend 100+ man hours on
that tool, and when done, you'll be so fluent
with every under-the-hood mechanism, you won't
even need it!

> My nephew who could use Windows prefers Linux
> for his web development he does for other
> companies so if any of this starts happening
> I think he'll be very interested and may even
> be making some technical contributions sooner
> or later.

Everyone prefers Linux to Windows for
everything save for games and Facebook, and
most certainly for everything ending with the
word "development"...

-- 
underground experts united
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573

Re: web design

[Kendall Shaw]

On 01/01/2018 09:05 PM, Emanuel Berg wrote:
> Jude DaShiell wrote:
>
>> One possible direction gnu tools might take
>> in the future would be in terms of scripts
>> first to install when necessary Linux tools
>> and use those locally then send site files
>> out for further checking and perhaps
>> processing and collect those the external
>> sites processed for the developers.
>> Multiple subdirectories with names of
>> internal and external tools on them could
>> hold the processed content as the content got
>> processed and returned. It would then be up
>> to the site developers to review what was
>> returned in each subdirectory to find if any
>> of the processing tools made
>> unacceptable errors.
> Indeed, feel free to spend 100+ man hours on
> that tool, and when done, you'll be so fluent
> with every under-the-hood mechanism, you won't
> even need it!
>
>> My nephew who could use Windows prefers Linux
>> for his web development he does for other
>> companies so if any of this starts happening
>> I think he'll be very interested and may even
>> be making some technical contributions sooner
>> or later.
> Everyone prefers Linux to Windows for
> everything save for games and Facebook, and
> most certainly for everything ending with the
> word "development"...

So, if web design means web development, I haven't seen people editing 
html files very often in a long time. For the progammer part of web 
development, Ruby on rails was a start to web application generators. 
Or, I think it was the big game changer long ago.

So, angular for example, has tools to generate parts of a web 
application that are separated into components. Except for rare static 
html files, what people edit is a template that is bound to javascript, 
ultimately. Styles (CSS) are compiled from something like less or sass, 
Javascript is compiled from something like clojurescript, typescript or 
newer javascript compiled into compatiable javascript. HTML is compiled 
from the templates.

That whole scheme fits with emacs and unix-like environments 
intentionally. Instead of a giant program like there were in the 90s, 
everything is modular so people can use the tools that they are 
comfortable with, or are told to use by people that they work with.

Everything, including the javascript and CSS is generated by tools. So, 
you use tide for example in emacs to edit typescript programs, or ensime 
to edit scala programs, or cider to edit clojure programs and than use 
the web frameworks nodejs build system the compile source code into 
HTML, CSS and Javascript. The GUI part of the development environment is 
within the web browser, where the web framework interfaces to the 
debugger within the web browser. Tools in emacs, vim, VSCode etc. 
interfaces with the underlying framework to edit and debug.

Clojurescript, for example can be edited in emacs at the repl as you 
watch the result of what you typed appearing in the web browser.

Kendall

Re: web design

[Emanuel Berg]

Kendall Shaw wrote:

> I haven't seen people editing html files very
> often in a long time.

Well, you haven't missed anything :)

> what people edit is a template that is bound
> to javascript, ultimately. Styles (CSS) are
> compiled from something like less or sass,
> Javascript is compiled from something like
> clojurescript, typescript or newer javascript
> compiled into compatiable javascript. HTML is
> compiled from the templates.

OK, then I don't know any tools either, except
for Org mode which I don't use personally but
was demonstrated to me not long ago and was
said could produce PDFs as well as HTML and
many other formats.

There are also a couple of shell tools that end
with "2html".

-- 
underground experts united
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573

Re: web design

[Kendall Shaw]

On 01/02/2018 08:39 AM, Emanuel Berg wrote:
> Kendall Shaw wrote:
>
>> I haven't seen people editing html files very
>> often in a long time.
> Well, you haven't missed anything :)
>
>> what people edit is a template that is bound
>> to javascript, ultimately. Styles (CSS) are
>> compiled from something like less or sass,
>> Javascript is compiled from something like
>> clojurescript, typescript or newer javascript
>> compiled into compatiable javascript. HTML is
>> compiled from the templates.
> OK, then I don't know any tools either, except
> for Org mode which I don't use personally but
> was demonstrated to me not long ago and was
> said could produce PDFs as well as HTML and
> many other formats.
>
> There are also a couple of shell tools that end
> with "2html".
>
My point was, the "gnu tools" are emacs. Together with that, a web 
browser + the web framework of your choice and eventually a web server. 
There is no editing html files or using x2html command, because the web 
framework defines how you create the web applications, and editing html 
or using x2html commands would conflict with the web framework.

Kendall

Re: web design

[Emanuel Berg]

Kendall Shaw wrote:

> My point was, the "gnu tools" are emacs.

Emacs is a GNU multitool, like a Swiss army
knife or a bits screwdriver. Only much better,
of course...

> Together with that, a web browser

There are web browsers for Emacs: Emacs w3m,
eww ... And other, non-Emacs GNU browsers
as well.

> web server.

Check.

> There is no editing html files

Yes there is :)

-- 
underground experts united
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573

re: web design

[Jude DaShiell]

few if any who use screen readers to use computers are doing anything with 
web design tools.  Screen reader accessibility of those tools is highly 
questionable; accessibility of web design tools cannot be ensured without 
retrofitting of output once complete, and there's too many layers between 
web design and output which increases probabilities for breakage by bugs 
and malware on each of those layers.



--

Re: web design

[Emanuel Berg]

Jude DaShiell wrote:

> few if any who use screen readers to use
> computers are doing anything with web
> design tools.

screen reader = tool for people who are blind
or visually impaired.

Many people who are blind do amazing things
with computers, including web pages, but
perhaps then without the focus on "design" as
much as publishing and text communication
in general.

I mean, it makes sense, right?

-- 
underground experts united
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573

Re: Web Design

[Kendall Shaw]

On 12/29/2017 05:47 PM, M. R.P. wrote:
> what gnu tools are their for web design?
>
>
One more post then I'm done. So, I will take "gnu tools" to mean 
something like open source tools... If you are like trying to settle a 
bet about what is available with GNU and FSF, then essentially Linux and 
emacs.

For web design:

If design is like graphics design and a program you move images around 
and put text together, that was something that existed in the 90s when 
more people had personal web sites (before facebook).

Back then, graphic artists would use tools like that for "cool" websites 
while programmers using perl etc. would make website for corporations 
where it was less important how the website looks. That has largely 
changed.

If that is what you are after, I suggesting looking at wordpress as has 
been mentioned. With that you get essentially the same thing but on the 
web with all sorts of thorny issues taken care of for you, like security.

Also, that way you could start at the personal web site stage and if you 
wanted to, you could grow into being a developer say for other people's 
sites, gradually.

For graphics GIMP and Inkscape come to mind. Inkscape for making vector 
graphics can be important.

For web development (programming):

Because emacs has new life with scala and clojure coming into broader 
public awareness, if you are not aware of it there is incredibly good 
support for web development in scala and clojure.

For example, here is someone demonstrating interactive web site 
development using emacs and a web browser's debugging api:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-kj2qwJa_E&t=947s

The demonstration is something like a game, but the same idea applies to 
other sorts of web development.

All of the major browsers have debugging protocols that allow tools to 
interface with the browser.

Similar phenomena where emacs is being taken seriously: Typescript, 
microsoft's language, has emacs support promoted by that language group. 
Tide  is the typescript development environment in emacs.

Generally, "modern web development' is heavily based on command line 
tools. In other words, command-line tools and unixish text editors are 
the mainstream tools.

The reason why that work is because people develop using "frameworks" 
which are not a program but an extensible set of tools independent of a 
vendor. So, the person using vim and the command line for everything 
uses the same tools as the person doing everything in Visual Studio. If 
this is new to you, you might want to look at the angular tutorial here:

https://angular.io/tutorial

That demonstrates how modular pieces of web applications are in common use.

Usually, everything is free and in github.

Visual Studio., not gnu but freeish and available on linux.

You could also look at Foundation which is an example of a framework 
that can fit within other frameworks and it's mostly about styles:

https://foundation.zurb.com/learn/tutorials.html

Also, ruby on rails: http://guides.rubyonrails.org/getting_started.html 
That is one of the major developments that changed the way most web 
development is done

Jekyyl which is based on using Markdown as the source for web pages:

https://jekyllrb.com/

Python and pyramid:

https://www.fullstackpython.com/pyramid.html

The phrase "full stack" alludes to the trend toward modular software 
fitting into frameworks is common.

Kendall

Re: Web Design

[Emanuel Berg]

Kendall Shaw wrote:

> One more post then I'm done.

Can't you do just ONE more?

> If design is like graphics design and
> a program you move images around and put text
> together, that was something that existed in
> the 90s when more people had personal web
> sites (before facebook).

This was indeed before Facebook (from 2004) but
Facebook was much later. The 90s "personal home
page" boom (the original meaning of PHP BTW) -
this boom was with services such as GeoCities
(1994) and Altavista (1995). Then came the
so-called portals with Passagen in Sweden,
Yandex in Russia, Yahoo! pretty much worldwide
and many, many others. There were also the IM
clients such as ICQ (pun for "I seek you") and
later MSN - MSN also had an attempted community
service which no one used - and all the while
IRC, of course, the client for Windows being
mIrc. There were also dedicated forums where
teenagers used to discuss politics and sex, the
result being pretty much embarrassing either
way. Even before Facebook were some
semi-popular communities, like MySpace (from
2003). Then came Facebook and the smartphone
(counter)revolution which was the nail in the
coffin for the hole "wicked" creative culture
as the common man invaded the Internet widely,
and since that day we'll have to do with
gnu.emacs.help .

Oh, and I forgot to mention AOL which used to
send orange CD-ROMS with every computer
magazine in the market place. They (AOL) were
later, or if it was before, involved in a big
controversy in the US (or NA), which here
became legendary because no one understood any
of it.

-- 
underground experts united
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573

Re: Web Design

[Emanuel Berg]

And to put all this into perspective,

UNIX is from 1969, Emacs 1976, GNU 1983, and
Linux 1991!

So *yes*, there are tools, many of which were
no doubt used when doing all those things
I mentioned in the previous post.

-- 
underground experts united
http://user.it.uu.se/~embe8573