bug#51137: 29.0.50; Make documentation more readable in mobile devices

bug#51137: 29.0.50; Make documentation more readable in mobile devices

[Carlos Pita]

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In my phone the navigation links and the subsection links are barely
visible and not proportionate to the body text, which is not only
unpleasant to look at but, more importantly, makes it very difficult to
navigate through the manual. See the attached screenshot.

Best regards,
Carlos


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bug#51137: 29.0.50; Make documentation more readable in mobile devices

[Stefan Kangas]

Carlos Pita <carlosjosepita2@gmail.com> writes:

> In my phone the navigation links and the subsection links are barely
> visible and not proportionate to the body text, which is not only
> unpleasant to look at but, more importantly, makes it very difficult to
> navigate through the manual. See the attached screenshot.

This documentation is generated by Texinfo, so I think this should be
reported to the texinfo developers at bug-texinfo@gnu.org.  I encourage
you to do so, as it would be nice to get this fixed.

Since this is not a bug in Emacs, I'm closing this bug report.  If you
think this conclusion is incorrect, please reply to this email (use
"Reply to all" in your email client) and we can consider reopening the
bug report.

bug#51137: 29.0.50; Make documentation more readable in mobile devices

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Carlos Pita <carlosjosepita2@gmail.com>
> Date: Mon, 11 Oct 2021 16:06:37 -0300
> 
> In my phone the navigation links and the subsection links are barely
> visible and not proportionate to the body text, which is not only
> unpleasant to look at but, more importantly, makes it very difficult to
> navigate through the manual. See the attached screenshot.

Isn't it a problem with the fonts installed on the phone?

bug#51137: 29.0.50; Make documentation more readable in mobile devices

[Carlos Pita]

> Isn't it a problem with the fonts installed on the phone?

I don't think so. I only see the issue with emacs, elisp and org-mode
documentation. Besides, it's a pretty standard Android phone running
Chrome, everything more or less up-to-date, no weird customization.
I've been seeing the same or related problems in other phones over the
years too. I will do as you said and report it to the texinfo
developers. Thanks!

bug#51137: 29.0.50; Make documentation more readable in mobile devices

[Carlos Pita]

In bug-texinfo they told me:

> This is not related to texinfo proper but to the CSS that's added on the gnu server side.

Any of you guys knows who else can I write for this?

bug#51137: 29.0.50; Make documentation more readable in mobile devices

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Carlos Pita <carlosjosepita2@gmail.com>
> Date: Mon, 11 Oct 2021 21:47:33 -0300
> Cc: 51137@debbugs.gnu.org
> 
> In bug-texinfo they told me:
> 
> > This is not related to texinfo proper but to the CSS that's added on the gnu server side.
> 
> Any of you guys knows who else can I write for this?

webmasters@gnu.org, I think.

bug#51137: 29.0.50; Make documentation more readable in mobile devices

[Glenn Morris]

Emacs developers have full control over the styling applied to the
manuals on gnu.org. See

https://web.cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/emacs/emacs/manual.css

(It's true that this mostly just applies gnu.org style, but you could
always stop doing so.)

and the tweaks from  manual-html-fix-* in admin/admin.el .

bug#51137: 29.0.50; Make documentation more readable in mobile devices

[Stefan Kangas]

Glenn Morris <rgm@gnu.org> writes:

> Emacs developers have full control over the styling applied to the
> manuals on gnu.org. See
>
> https://web.cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/emacs/emacs/manual.css
>
> (It's true that this mostly just applies gnu.org style, but you could
> always stop doing so.)

But it seems better that the GNU stylesheet is updated, so that this is
fixed for everyone and not just for Emacs.

> and the tweaks from  manual-html-fix-* in admin/admin.el .

bug#51137: 29.0.50; Make documentation more readable in mobile devices

[Lars Ingebrigtsen]

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Stefan Kangas <stefan@marxist.se> writes:

>> (It's true that this mostly just applies gnu.org style, but you could
>> always stop doing so.)
>
> But it seems better that the GNU stylesheet is updated, so that this is
> fixed for everyone and not just for Emacs.

Yes.  The problem seems to be here in style.css:

/* For navigation links */
.node a, .header a {display: inline-block;line-height: 2em;}

Having the <a> in the header be inline-block apparently makes
Chrome-based mobile browsers display the links very weirdly.

To test on a Chromium browser, go to this page:

https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Basic-Minibuffer.html

And then use Developer Tools to switch to mobile view, and you should
see the problems:


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Could someone who controls the style.css file fix this,
webmasters@gnu.org?

If not, we can override this in the Emacs style sheets, but it seems
like it's a style.css problem.  (On the other hand, perhaps not -- CSS
problems aren't always trivial to debug.)

bug#51137: [gnu.org #1872370] Re: bug#51137: 29.0.50; Make documentation more readable in mobile devices

[Lars Ingebrigtsen]

"Therese Godefroy via RT" <webmasters@gnu.org> writes:

> I commented out the inline-block display. This solves the Chromium
> issue, 

Thanks; I can confirm that the too-small link issue is gone on Chromium
mobile views.

> but the font size is still way too small on phones with
> Firefox. To get a correct display in both browsers, the page should
> have a viewport meta tag in its <head> element:
> <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"
> />.

I tested on my Android phone here with Firefox and Chrome, and the font
size looked pretty similar (and not too small).  Perhaps it varies
between versions?

bug#51137: [gnu.org #1872370] Re: bug#51137: 29.0.50; Make documentation more readable in mobile devices

[Stefan Kangas]

Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> writes:

>> but the font size is still way too small on phones with
>> Firefox. To get a correct display in both browsers, the page should
>> have a viewport meta tag in its <head> element:
>> <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"
>> />.

That HTML is generated by "makeinfo --html".

The viewport stuff was already added to texinfo in:
https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/texinfo.git/commit/?id=2509d615c

AFAICT, that commit was part of texinfo 6.8, released in June 2021,
which is already in Debian testing.

So I don't think there is anything more for us to do here.