docbook: Thread: Updated CSS for HOWTOs

Hello All,

I have written a new CSS for displaying HOWTOs. Here is a sample output:

http://www.xml-dev.com:8080/tldp/http://www.xtrinsic.com/geek/articles/acpi.xml
and
http://www.xml-dev.com:8080/tldp/http://tibberio.freeshell.org/pock-it/Pocket-Linux-Guide/Pocket-Linux-Guide.xml

(watch for line wraps)

Here are more sample: http://www.xml-dev.com/blog/#88

So how does the new formating looks? Is it is any good or should I change
the colors?


Thanks.
Saqib Ali
-------------
http://validate.sf.net <---- (X)HTML / DocBook Validator and Transformer

Saqib Ali wrote:
> Hello All,
> 
> I have written a new CSS for displaying HOWTOs. Here is a sample output:
> 
> http://www.xml-dev.com:8080/tldp/http://www.xtrinsic.com/geek/articles/acpi.xml
> and
> http://www.xml-dev.com:8080/tldp/http://tibberio.freeshell.org/pock-it/Pocket-Linux-Guide/Pocket-Linux-Guide.xml
> 
> (watch for line wraps)
> 
> Here are more sample: http://www.xml-dev.com/blog/#88
> 
> So how does the new formating looks? Is it is any good or should I change
> the colors?
> 
> 
> Thanks.
> Saqib Ali
> -------------

Saqib,

CSS is a great idea for TLDP.  It gives the documents a much nicer look 
than plain old unstyled HTML.  I'm glad to see that you chose a 
sans-serif font.  It makes things much easier to read on a screen than 
the Times Roman font that is standard on so many browsers.

I would like to offer the following suggestions for the sample stylesheets:

* Margins and whitespace make documents easier to read.  A 5% to 10% 
margin would be nice and would equate to about 1/2 an inch to an inch on 
US Letter sized paper.  I would also suggest margins in boxed text like 
<programlisting>'s.

* A high contrast black text on white background would be easier to read 
than a colored text on white.  I would go high contrast on the body text 
and save the colored text for the headings and other things that need to 
stand out.

* I would choose a different overall color scheme.  I am not an expert 
on color, but I picked up a few things from my dad the art teacher.  :^) 
  You might try a monochromatic or analogous color scheme.  (Here's a 
site showing some examples: 
http://www.color-wheel-pro.com/color-theory-basics.html)  Cordinating 
the heading colors, link colors and border colors for boxes can add a 
professional touch.

You have an excellent start with the current stylesheet.  A few tweaks 
and it will be brilliant.  I would love to see the final product adopted 
for docs served up at the TLDP website.

Dave

Hello David,

Thanks for the response,


> * Margins and whitespace make documents easier to read.  A 5% to 10%
> margin would be nice and would equate to about 1/2 an inch to an inch on
> US Letter sized paper.  I would also suggest margins in boxed text like
> <programlisting>'s.

I added the margin to overall document. But I am not sure howto add margin
inside the <programlisting>. If anyone has any idea on how to do this,
please let me know.


> * A high contrast black text on white background would be easier to read
> than a colored text on white.  I would go high contrast on the body text
> and save the colored text for the headings and other things that need to
> stand out.
I changed the text color to black (#000000).


> * I would choose a different overall color scheme.  I am not an expert
> on color, but I picked up a few things from my dad the art teacher.  :^)
>   You might try a monochromatic or analogous color scheme.  (Here's a
> site showing some examples:
> http://www.color-wheel-pro.com/color-theory-basics.html)  Cordinating
> the heading colors, link colors and border colors for boxes can add a
> professional touch.

This will take some time for me to learn color theory. Anyone wants to
help me??? :)

Thanks.
Saqib Ali
-------------
http://validate.sf.net <---- (X)HTML / DocBook Validator and Transformer

Saqib Ali wrote:
> Hello David,
> 
> Thanks for the response,
> 
> 
> 
>>* Margins and whitespace make documents easier to read.  A 5% to 10%
>>margin would be nice and would equate to about 1/2 an inch to an inch on
>>US Letter sized paper.  I would also suggest margins in boxed text like
>><programlisting>'s.
> 
> 
> I added the margin to overall document. But I am not sure howto add margin
> inside the <programlisting>. If anyone has any idea on how to do this,
> please let me know.
> 
> 
> 
>>* A high contrast black text on white background would be easier to read
>>than a colored text on white.  I would go high contrast on the body text
>>and save the colored text for the headings and other things that need to
>>stand out.
> 
> I changed the text color to black (#000000).
> 
> 
> 
>>* I would choose a different overall color scheme.  I am not an expert
>>on color, but I picked up a few things from my dad the art teacher.  :^)
>>  You might try a monochromatic or analogous color scheme.  (Here's a
>>site showing some examples:
>>http://www.color-wheel-pro.com/color-theory-basics.html)  Cordinating
>>the heading colors, link colors and border colors for boxes can add a
>>professional touch.
> 
> 
> This will take some time for me to learn color theory. Anyone wants to
> help me??? :)
> 
> Thanks.
> Saqib Ali


Saqib,

Here is an example of a stylesheet that uses a very conservative 
monochromatic color scheme (black, white and grey) and uses margins 
around the document and in the <programlisting>'s <note>'s and such.

http://my.core.com/~dhorton/docbook/mozbook/MozBook.css

This stylesheet is intended to style DocBook XML directly, so it won't 
work on HTML without modification.  However, if you are using the 
Mozilla browser you can see the application of style by visiting:

http://my.core.com/~dhorton/docbook/mozbook/sample.xml

Feel free to use the stylesheet, modify it, borrow from it or whatever.

Dave

Hello Machtelt,

Thanks for the feedback:

> I like the displays of notes and warnings and such, but maybe you can put
> in the little icons from stylesheet-images to make it extra clear which is
> which.
I almost forgot about these. Thanks for reminding. I fixed it the
admonition icon. Try these:

http://www.xml-dev.com:8080/tldp/http://www.xtrinsic.com/geek/articles/acpi.xml
or
http://www.xml-dev.com:8080/tldp/http://tibberio.freeshell.org/pock-it/Pocket-Linux-Guide/Pocket-Linux-Guide.xml
or
http://www.xml-dev.com:8080/tldp/http://cvsview.tldp.org/index.cgi/*checkout*/LDP/guide/docbook/Intro-Linux/abook.xml

(watch for line wraps)

Here are more samples >>> http://www.xml-dev.com/blog/#88


> When you click on a link and then turn back, or see the same link
> somewhere else, it should have a different colour than the non-visited
> links.

done! :)

Thanks
Saqib Ali
-------------
http://validate.sf.net <---- (X)HTML / DocBook Validator and Transformer

ok, so we all agree that we need a good CSS for the Linux documentation
project. Now what do we do?

Should I go ahead post job on the sourceforge.net for some CSS guru to
volunteer for this task?

Let me know.

Thanks.
Saqib Ali
-------------
http://validate.sf.net <---- (X)HTML / DocBook XML Validator and Transformer




On Wed, 24 Mar 2004, Togan Muftuoglu wrote:

> * Machtelt Garrels; ####@####.#### on 24 Mar, 2004 wrote:
> >-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> >Hash: SHA1
> >
> >
> >On Tue, 23 Mar 2004, Togan Muftuoglu wrote:
> >
> >> The seals have the saying difficult consider done, impossible takes
> >> time" sorry I do not have time to supports IE users.
> >
> >So let's stick to what we know and ban others from getting to know us?
> >It's this sort of elitarism that gives the Linux community a bad name.
> >Gurus with an attitude, are we?
>
> I have never said I am a guru on any subject, however if you consider
> that I am one then I am surely one with selective criteria as it is a
> proven process by the nature (natural selection)
>
> >
> >YOU are not alone, remember.  If YOU don't have time, we'll just have to
> >find somebody else to care for these matters.
>
> please consider using first person cases as "you" do not represent "we"
>
>
> >Some statistics from a site that contains _only_ Linux info, and that gets
> >like 20-25.000 visitors per month:
> >
> >Windows Users: 65,3%
> >Linux Users: 23%
> >Mac Users: 2,3%
> >
> >MSIE6.0 Users: 44%
> >MSIE5.5 Users: 2,8%
> >MSIE5.0 Users: 3,1%
> >Netscape7.1 Users: 1,6%
> >Netscape5.0 Users: 20,8%
> >Mozilla Users: 7,5%
> >
> >And you are saying that we should not support these people?  We, with our
> >Mozillas, Konquerors, Galeons and Operas only make up 14% of the visitors.
>
> This is not a definitive statistic as for instance with squid I can say
> I am running Windows along with MSIE while in reality I am running Linux
> with firefox so these figures you have given for me means nothing
> guarenteed other then log interpretation of the User Agent related logs
> of a site
>
>
>
> >
> >The good thing is that TLDP is not a Belgian organization, or you could
>
> Thank God,
>
>
> --
>
> Togan Muftuoglu
>
>
> ______________________
> http://lists.tldp.org/
>
>

Hello All,

I ran into this CSS for DocBook content
http://www.jesuislibre.org/common_dbk/docbook.css

I uses pretty good colors, including Emma's favorite
color i.e. Orange ;)

Here are some sample HTML documents using the CSS
http://www.jesuislibre.org/docbook/HP_nx9010/HP_nx9010.html
http://www.jesuislibre.org/docbook/xml/xml.html
http://www.jesuislibre.org/docbook/fusion_nagios/fusion_nagios.html
http://www.jesuislibre.org/docbook/gpg/gpg_dbk.html

Let me know what you think. I can contact the author
for permission to use.

Thanks.
Saqib Ali
http://validate.sf.net


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