bug#16450: 24.3.50; HTML manual on line has all text centered instead of left-justified

bug#16450: 24.3.50; HTML manual on line has all text centered instead of left-justified

[Drew Adams]

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Dunno whether this is perhaps already known and not considered a bug.
Dunno whether, if it is considered a bug, it is seen as an Emacs bug,
since Emacs manuals are not the only ones exhibiting the bug.

Anyway, If I look at the GNU manuals online, such as this one:
http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/elisp.html, and I choose "HTML
- with one web page per node.", and I start visiting nodes, I see that
the individual lines of text are generally centered, instead of being
left-justified.

This looks awful and makes reading more difficult.  A list of bullets,
for instance, does not have the bullets aligned.  Here, as an example,
is the first node of the Elisp manual:
http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/elisp/Introduction.html#Introduction

And this is what it looks like - see attachment.

In GNU Emacs 24.3.50.1 (i686-pc-mingw32)
 of 2014-01-07 on ODIEONE
Bzr revision: 115916 bzg@gnu.org-20140107233629-du2solx6tmxnx0np
Windowing system distributor `Microsoft Corp.', version 6.1.7601
Configured using:
 `configure --prefix=/c/Devel/emacs/binary --enable-checking=yes,glyphs
 'CFLAGS=-O0 -g3' LDFLAGS=-Lc:/Devel/emacs/lib
 CPPFLAGS=-Ic:/Devel/emacs/include'

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bug#16450: 24.3.50; HTML manual on line has all text centered instead of left-justified

[Glenn Morris]

Not reproducible on RHEL6 with firefox, opera, or konqueror.

bug#16450: 24.3.50; HTML manual on line has all text centered instead of left-justified

[Drew Adams]

> Not reproducible on RHEL6 with firefox, opera, or konqueror.

And you can add Google Chrome to that list.
The problem appears, at least, in IE8.

bug#16450: 24.3.50; HTML manual on line has all text centered instead of left-justified

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2014 21:31:58 -0800 (PST)
> From: Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com>
> 
> Anyway, If I look at the GNU manuals online, such as this one:
> http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/elisp.html, and I choose "HTML
> - with one web page per node.", and I start visiting nodes, I see that
> the individual lines of text are generally centered, instead of being
> left-justified.

This seems to be browser-specific.  I see the problem in (an old
version of) Internet Explorer, but not in Firefox, nor in eww.

Perhaps some CSS expert could take a look at the stylesheets used by
that manual, and see why it has such an effect.

bug#16450: 24.3.50; HTML manual on line has all text centered instead of left-justified

[Glenn Morris]

Eli Zaretskii wrote:

> This seems to be browser-specific.  I see the problem in (an old
> version of) Internet Explorer, but not in Firefox, nor in eww.
>
> Perhaps some CSS expert could take a look at the stylesheets used by
> that manual, and see why it has such an effect.

It's the general gnu.org stylesheet, so for once I believe this to be an
issue for GNU webmasters. You might check how other gnu.org pages look.

bug#16450: 24.3.50; HTML manual on line has all text centered instead of left-justified

[Glenn Morris]

>> Emacs manuals are not the only ones exhibiting the bug.

Therefore this should be reported to webmasters@gnu.org,
since no-one here can do anything about it.
Give them precise details of the affected browser version.

bug#16450: 24.3.50; HTML manual on line has all text centered instead of left-justified

[Drew Adams]

> >> Emacs manuals are not the only ones exhibiting the bug.
> 
> Therefore this should be reported to webmasters@gnu.org,
> since no-one here can do anything about it.
> Give them precise details of the affected browser version.

I've done that.  Thx.

bug#16450: 24.3.50; HTML manual on line has all text centered instead of left-justified

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Glenn Morris <rgm@gnu.org>
> Cc: 16450@debbugs.gnu.org
> Date: Wed, 15 Jan 2014 14:45:20 -0500
> 
> Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> 
> > This seems to be browser-specific.  I see the problem in (an old
> > version of) Internet Explorer, but not in Firefox, nor in eww.
> >
> > Perhaps some CSS expert could take a look at the stylesheets used by
> > that manual, and see why it has such an effect.
> 
> It's the general gnu.org stylesheet, so for once I believe this to be an
> issue for GNU webmasters. You might check how other gnu.org pages look.

I looked at some other manuals, and the ones for Emacs seem to be the
only ones with this problem.  Looks like Emacs is the only project
that uses Texinfo 5.x for these, so maybe that is the source of the
problem.

bug#16450: 24.3.50; HTML manual on line has all text centered instead of left-justified

[Glenn Morris]

Eli Zaretskii wrote:

> I looked at some other manuals, and the ones for Emacs seem to be the
> only ones with this problem.

Drew Adams wrote:

> Emacs manuals are not the only ones exhibiting the bug.

?

> Looks like Emacs is the only project that uses Texinfo 5.x for these,

?

We don't use Texinfo 5 (unless someone has regenerated these since I
did, and it does not look like it).

bug#16450: 24.3.50; HTML manual on line has all text centered instead of left-justified

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Glenn Morris <rgm@gnu.org>
> Cc: 16450@debbugs.gnu.org
> Date: Wed, 15 Jan 2014 15:47:35 -0500
> 
> > Looks like Emacs is the only project that uses Texinfo 5.x for these,
> 
> ?
> 
> We don't use Texinfo 5 (unless someone has regenerated these since I
> did, and it does not look like it).

Maybe.  All I know is that other manuals explicitly say something like

  <meta name="generator" content="makeinfo 4.13">

while the Emacs manuals don't.  Also, the look-and-feel are distinctly
different from the rest.

bug#16450: 24.3.50; HTML manual on line has all text centered instead of left-justified

[Glenn Morris]

Eli Zaretskii wrote:

> Maybe.  All I know is that other manuals explicitly say something like
>
>   <meta name="generator" content="makeinfo 4.13">
>
> while the Emacs manuals don't.

M-x make-manuals strips that out. I assure you I used makeinfo 4.13.

> Also, the look-and-feel are distinctly different from the rest.

M-x make-manuals does some tweaks.

bug#16450: 24.3.50; HTML manual on line has all text centered instead of left-justified

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Glenn Morris <rgm@gnu.org>
> Cc: 16450@debbugs.gnu.org
> Date: Wed, 15 Jan 2014 16:07:54 -0500
> 
> Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> 
> > Maybe.  All I know is that other manuals explicitly say something like
> >
> >   <meta name="generator" content="makeinfo 4.13">
> >
> > while the Emacs manuals don't.
> 
> M-x make-manuals strips that out. I assure you I used makeinfo 4.13.
> 
> > Also, the look-and-feel are distinctly different from the rest.
> 
> M-x make-manuals does some tweaks.

Then perhaps "M-x make-manuals" is the root cause for all this?

bug#16450: 24.3.50; HTML manual on line has all text centered instead of left-justified

[Glenn Morris]

Eli Zaretskii wrote:

> Then perhaps "M-x make-manuals" is the root cause for all this?

Yep, quite possibly. But someone with access to Internet Explorer will
have to investigate. I'd suggest looking at the div's and the styles
associated with them in the css. (But that's only a guess.)
Or maybe there is some align spec that IE does not follow.

bug#16450: 24.3.50; HTML manual on line has all text centered instead of left-justified

[Glenn Morris]

Version: 24.4

A change to gnu.org css has fixed this.
You need to force IE to reload the css.

bug#16450: 24.3.50; HTML manual on line has all text centered instead of left-justified

[Drew Adams]

> Version: 24.4
> A change to gnu.org css has fixed this.
> You need to force IE to reload the css.

Thx.

bug#16450: 24.3.50; HTML manual on line has all text centered instead of left-justified

[Drew Adams]

> Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > I looked at some other manuals, and the ones for Emacs seem to be the
> > only ones with this problem.
> 
> Drew Adams wrote:
> > Emacs manuals are not the only ones exhibiting the bug.
> 
> ?

From the list at http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/ I tried to find a non-Emacs manual, before I filed the bug. The description of Wisent was one that seemed like it was not an Emacs manual, so I looked at that manual. It has the same problem.

bug#16450: 24.3.50; HTML manual on line has all text centered instead of left-justified

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Wed, 15 Jan 2014 13:00:07 -0800 (PST)
> From: Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com>
> Cc: 16450@debbugs.gnu.org
> 
> > Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > > I looked at some other manuals, and the ones for Emacs seem to be the
> > > only ones with this problem.
> > 
> > Drew Adams wrote:
> > > Emacs manuals are not the only ones exhibiting the bug.
> > 
> > ?
> 
> >From the list at http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/ I tried to find a non-Emacs manual, before I filed the bug. The description of Wisent was one that seemed like it was not an Emacs manual, so I looked at that manual. It has the same problem.

Everything under http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/ is "Emacs
manuals".  Non-Emacs manuals are found via http://www.gnu.org/software/.