From: Eric Wong <e@80x24.org>
To: Charles Zhang <csalinezh@gmail.com>
Cc: meta@public-inbox.org
Subject: Re: Considerations about format=flowed support and web page responsiveness
Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2023 07:35:56 +0000 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <20230214073556.M451504@dcvr> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20230213105925.6zccabv3yldniqam@m>
Charles Zhang <csalinezh@gmail.com> wrote:
<snip> thanks for the comments although we have different views.
> These problems are known as "embarrassing line wrap" in RFC 3676 and can be
> solved by format=flowed it proposed. Whether the text should be fluid is a
> matter of personal opinion. To me, the presence of format=flowed in
> Content-Type signifies sender's intent to make it flow. Thus it should
> preferably be honoured during presentation by the reader software.
f=f will be supported only because it exists and MUAs (e.g.
mutt) support it; not because I want to encourage it as it
as f=f mangles code+patches while forcing more complexity into
renderers/viewers (including `git log' for commit messages)
<snip>
> f=f allows archivers to convert text quoted with leading < into HTML
> <blockquote>, removing the leading angle bracket. This approach should be
> preferred since it preserves the semantic meaning in generated HTML, which
> also helps accessibility. Nesting relationship seems to be customarily
> presented with a solid bar on the left (thick left border). mail-archive.com
> and mhonarc behave as such. hypermail seems to only unwrap ordinary texts,
> leaving quoted part with <, and apply a different color to differentiate
> nesting levels using things like class="quotelev2".
<blockquote> is indistinguishable from indentation in w3m.
lynx can show a different color, but that does not work for
color-blind users, nor users on monochromatic displays.
So I'm keeping `>' prefixes since that's what local MUAs
(e.g. mutt) does. It also makes copy+paste forwarding
easier.
It's of utmost importance that users with broken graphics
drivers be able to access public-inbox instances and download
patches from the terminal (which may be required to fix their
graphics drivers).
<snip>
> Therefore, current f=f archiver implementations behave similarly, and I
> think public-inbox should follow that model by letting client browsers to
> reflow the text. This makes the mailing list archive (at least f=f enabled
> mails) much more readable to phone users (which makes up the majority of
> Internet users currently). A little CSS tweaks should make an f=f mail
> doesn't look out of place in a thread with adjacent fixed mails.
While phone users make up the majority of Internet users;
I don't expect the majority of people reading code/patch
emails to be doing so on their phones.
We'll probably use <code> instead of <pre> for f=f messages
(since <tt> is deprecated :<, and we can't rely on all GUI
browsers supporting *{font-family:monospace} CSS)
> If the implementation for format=flowed will proceed, I have some additional
> thoughts for the look and feel of public-inbox.
>
> The current public-inbox website, like traditional plain text email, is
> modelled after a fixed display region. It uses hard linebreaks to keep line
> width at about 68 characters. <meta name="viewport"> is not declared in
> <head>. Using preformatted text, as discussed in the beginning, is personal
> design taste of the developer. However, I consider this to be an opportunity
> to consider whether the website should be made more responsive, by ditching
> <pre> in help texts and use styles like max-width to maintain a reasonable
> line width.
Right. Using <pre> everywhere makes it easy to get a WYSIWYG
experience for everyone, regardless of which browser they use
(or even if it's just `curl $URL | $PAGER'). I certainly don't
want to encourage the use of complex modern browsers which take
hours or even days to build.
Fwiw, I manually wrap my messages depending on how I want
the text to appear, not usually to any hard limit. I do
favor shorter lines in anticipation of quoting or indentation
(e.g. what `git log' does by default)
The goal of our HTML isn't to be an end-all, be-all UI;
but rather a way to bring a mutt-like experience to more users
(and maybe drive local MUA adoption in the process).
> [1] https://public-inbox.org/meta/20220901185829.30117-1-e@80x24.org/
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2023-02-14 7:35 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 4+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2023-02-13 10:59 Considerations about format=flowed support and web page responsiveness Charles Zhang
2023-02-14 7:35 ` Eric Wong [this message]
2023-02-18 20:51 ` Charles Zhang
2023-02-19 21:22 ` Eric Wong
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