Re: [restyle] Questionnaire wrt Redesign of the W3C Spec Templates

On Mon, Oct 13, 2014 at 12:53 PM, David Singer <singer@apple.com> wrote:

> I think my top request would be to make on-line reading the norm and a
> printed version works/exists, but is secondary.  At the moment, I would say
> we’re styled more for printing than online reading.
>

I would say rather that it would be nice if eReading were the norm.  It
might not be "on-line".  But if the specifications were able to be readily
read on my computer / tablet with all that implies, it would be a big
improvement.  I agree that we also need to continue to serve the (large but
decreasing) community that wants to print it out.


>
> For a spec. of any size, I think we could do much better at providing
> (automatically) navigation help etc.  Perhaps that includes the
> multi-page/one-page choices.  For me it also includes (a) knowing where
> anchors are, so I can point at them from the outside (if they are not part
> of the index, it’s not evident they are there).
>

We are looking at this in the ReSpec arena now in the context of cross
referencing.  ReSpec / specref and Bikeshed / Shepherd sort of deal with
it, but we need to get better at it.  Right now ReSpec does support
permalinks though.  And that's a decent way to get well defined external
links for referencing (at the section / header level).


>
> Something that is probably more than ReSpec and is surely more than
> styling would be to make it much easier to know where concepts are used —
> ‘backlinks’ (this anchor is referred to from X, Y, Z), and so on.
>

We are able to do this now in theory.  How would you envision such
information manifesting itself?  tooltip? context menu?  Auto-generated
glossary with links to where the items are referenced?


>
>
> On Oct 10, 2014, at 22:07 , fantasai <fantasai.lists@inkedblade.net>
> wrote:
>
> > Hi everyone,
> > We're looking into redesigning the W3C spec templates and style sheets
> > to reduce boilerplate content and improve usability and readability.
> > To help guide this project, we wanted to collect some information from
> > all the W3C WGs!
> >
> > So please forward this to your WGs; answers are welcome from WGs as a
> > whole and/or individual members, or some combination thereof, however
> > your group prefers to answer. Send them to spec-prod@w3.org [public].
> >
> >  1. Give me 3-5 adjectives for how the visual design of
> >     a W3C spec should "feel".
> >
> >  2. List the URLs to 3 specs that are representative of
> >     your WG's output (especially wrt markup and structure
> >     of the content).
> >
> >  3. Do you have any documentation of your markup conventions?
> >     Please paste URLs:
> >
> >  4. What spec processing tools does your WG actively use?
> >
> >  5. What are your goals for the redesign?
> >
> >  6. Is there anything else we should know / consider?
> >
> >
> > Note: This project is going to be a consensus-driven experiment, so
> > feedback will be welcome throughout. However, it is also a spare-time
> > project, so progress might be a bit slow and sporadic. :)
> >
> > More information at https://www.w3.org/wiki/SpecProd/Restyle
> >
> > Thanks~
> > ~fantasai
> >
>
> David Singer
> Manager, Software Standards, Apple Inc.
>
>
>