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Redesigned GNU C Library manual

by elmerland on 3/22/15, 1:07 AM with 61 comments

• by hurin on 3/22/15, 5:37 AM

  It really doesn't work for me. Here is why:

  A big part of manuals is being able to read or scroll fluidly into the next or previous section - very often one doesn't know whether what they are looking for is mentioned in 1.3.1 or 1.3.2 - having to manually click each section is completely atrocious for usability. Not to mention you just broke search.

  If you want a responsive design that's actually useful as opposed to counterproductive, leave the sidebar for navigation (down-scale it to 50% it's huge and distracting) and restore the document to a contiguous form. There is a reason manuals have been written the way they are for dozens of years, hip and flashy design elements might sell products - but they do not help with productivity.

• by Hello71 on 3/22/15, 2:14 AM

      $ links https://www.gnu.org/software/libc/manual/html_mono/libc.html
         Link: [start: Top]
         Link: [index: Concept Index]
         Link: [contents: Table of Contents]
         Link: [up: (dir)]
      
                                     The GNU C Library
      
      Short Table of Contents
      
           * [1 Introduction]
           * [2 Error Reporting]
           * [3 Virtual Memory Allocation And Paging]
           * [4 Character Handling]
           * [5 String and Array Utilities]
           * [6 Character Set Handling]
           * [7 Locales and Internationalization]
           * [8 Message Translation]
           * [9 Searching and Sorting]
           * [10 Pattern Matching]
      ^C
      $ links http://elmerland.com/gnu_manual.html
                                     The GNU C Library
      
         [About] [By: Elmer Landaverde]
  

  Edit: Added [] to show selectable links (note that [] are not actually displayed in links' output)

• by cplease on 3/22/15, 4:36 PM

  I have a big problem with this. The header says "The GNU C Library" and then in big letters "By: Elmer Landaverde".

  You did not write either glibc or the manual. The original authors did not credit themselves, yet you've appropriated credit for what is essentially restyling the HTML output of texinfo into a less usable, unscrollable, unsearchable form.

  If you insist on the huge attribution, change it to something accurate like "Style template by:"

• by DanBC on 3/22/15, 4:09 AM

  These types of comment are now officially off-topic so I wouldn't normally make them but, since this submission is about the design of the webpage:

  http://imgur.com/NNmmxdx

  http://imgur.com/qv6BPj4

  This is latest Chrome on iOS. That header banner is fixed (that's sub-optimal) and all the content is in that little box.

• by nirvanis on 3/22/15, 2:23 AM

  On a semi-related note: Man Pages in HTML that do not look ugly: http://linux.bar/man1/memusage.1.html

• by fit2rule on 3/22/15, 11:24 AM

  This is a really great resource - so great, I'd love to have an offline copy for reference. However it doesn't look like its set up for easy mirroring with wget .. does anyone else have an idea how it could be mirrored locally for offline use, or shall I just contact the author?

• by dman on 3/22/15, 1:50 AM

  Could you get the sections to start out expanded by default?

• by pekk on 3/22/15, 1:29 AM

  Unless I've missed something, this isn't a redesign of the library, it's a restyling of the manual as a website.

• by notdang on 3/23/15, 12:57 AM

  Doesn't work without javascript

• by kasabali on 3/22/15, 2:00 AM

  It looks great!

  I haven't inspected how you did it but I guess it shouldn't be hard to apply it to other GNU manuals also, as all are very similar in the sense that they all are produced using the same tools.

  Another idea: local search function similar to Sphinx's would be really nice.