Package page

Package page

[Adam Pribyl]

The GuixSD package page

https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/packages/

is getting somewhat large to load. It is also bit short sighted to list 
all packages on one html page. Any plans what to with this?

Adam Pribyl

Re: Package page

[ng0]

Adam Pribyl <pribyl@lowlevel.cz> writes:

> The GuixSD package page
>
> https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/packages/
>
> is getting somewhat large to load. It is also bit short sighted to
> list all packages on one html page. Any plans what to with this?
>
> Adam Pribyl
>
>

Yes, it's not ideal. We had some discussions about this in the
past, but I think the preference is to deploy an improved listing
instead of no listing at all. I don't remember what the current
status of the alternative search is,someone else can fill this
in.

Personally I'm in favor of erasing the /packages page (until we
have an improved alternative), no one likes pages which kill your
browser process - which happens with some current browsers when
you visit our packages page. Better have no listing than to have
a listing which leaves a bad impressions by loading long and
eventually make your browser crash.

Re: Package page

[David Pirotte]

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Hi,

> Personally I'm in favor of erasing the /packages page (until we
> have an improved alternative), no one likes pages which kill your
> browser process 

FWIW, I still have a [very] low internet band, I'm using epiphany, and it loads the
page in less then a second here.  I personnaly think it is important to guive
users a way to search 'visually' for packages... so for me, this page is perfect.

David

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Re: Package page

[ng0]

David Pirotte <david@altosw.be> writes:

> Hi,
>
>> Personally I'm in favor of erasing the /packages page (until we
>> have an improved alternative), no one likes pages which kill your
>> browser process 
>
> FWIW, I still have a [very] low internet band, I'm using epiphany, and it loads the
> page in less then a second here.  I personnaly think it is important to guive
> users a way to search 'visually' for packages... so for me, this page is perfect.
>
> David

The reports I got on crashing were chromium and recent
firefox. I'm pretty sure without trying that w3m, lynx, links,
elinks and others can manage as good as epiphany, but it still
hangs with firefox and chromium, which almost no website manages
these days, no matter how overblown in code :)

Re: Package page

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hello!

Adam Pribyl <pribyl@lowlevel.cz> skribis:

> The GuixSD package page
>
> https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/packages/
>
> is getting somewhat large to load. It is also bit short sighted to
> list all packages on one html page. Any plans what to with this?

It’s a shame indeed and we should definitely add JS code to browse it.
There’s already code for that in Guix-Web¹ that could be used as a
starting point (the web site’s code is in guix-artwork.git²).

Are you volunteering?  :-)  That would be a great contribution!

Ludo’.

¹ https://git.dthompson.us/guix-web.git
² http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix/guix-artwork.git/tree/website/www/packages.scm

Re: Package page

[pelzflorian (Florian Pelz)]

On 11/11/2016 06:41 PM, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
> Hello!
> 
> Adam Pribyl <pribyl@lowlevel.cz> skribis:
> 
>> The GuixSD package page
>>
>> https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/packages/
>>
>> is getting somewhat large to load. It is also bit short sighted to
>> list all packages on one html page. Any plans what to with this?
> 
> It’s a shame indeed and we should definitely add JS code to browse it.
> There’s already code for that in Guix-Web¹ that could be used as a
> starting point (the web site’s code is in guix-artwork.git²).
> 

Just my 2¢ as a user who does not yet have the time to contribute: I
typically browse the Web with JavaScript disabled and don’t think
JavaScript should be required without a good reason. Currently the
packages page loads somewhat slowly in Netsurf and GNU Icecat for me
(with and without JS) but I can search the packages with Ctrl+F. Please
at least retain some sort of search functionality for non-JS users
(server-side search through a form?).

Regards,
Florian

Re: Package page

[Alex Sassmannshausen]

Hello,

pelzflorian (Florian Pelz) writes:

> On 11/11/2016 06:41 PM, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
>> Hello!
>> 
>> Adam Pribyl <pribyl@lowlevel.cz> skribis:
>> 
>>> The GuixSD package page
>>>
>>> https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/packages/
>>>
>>> is getting somewhat large to load. It is also bit short sighted to
>>> list all packages on one html page. Any plans what to with this?
>> 
>> It’s a shame indeed and we should definitely add JS code to browse it.
>> There’s already code for that in Guix-Web¹ that could be used as a
>> starting point (the web site’s code is in guix-artwork.git²).
>
> Just my 2¢ as a user who does not yet have the time to contribute: I
> typically browse the Web with JavaScript disabled and don’t think
> JavaScript should be required without a good reason.

I tend to come at this from a similar perspective — though I consider a
nice UI to be a "good reason".  I tend to err on the side of "graceful
degradation", which is why the patch I provided tries to implement a
JS-less version first, upon which we could build JS functionality.

> Currently the packages page loads somewhat slowly in Netsurf and GNU
> Icecat for me (with and without JS) but I can search the packages with
> Ctrl+F. Please at least retain some sort of search functionality for
> non-JS users (server-side search through a form?).

Agreed. I think for now we can retain the one page load for all
packages.

The downside of having server-side search is that we lose the nice
simplicity of having a static web page as we do now.

I think the paginated pages approach I propose in my patch would provide
a compromise: you select the letter by which your package starts and
then you can do C-f.  Alternatively, take the risk and load the full
page…

Alex