
Redesigned GNU C Library manual - elmerland
http://elmerland.com/gnu_manual.html
======
hurin
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.

~~~
detaro
_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._

This, it is often split in sections smaller than the screen so you have to
uncollapse way to many items. Make the navigation jump to the right section in
the document, maybe allow to collapse sections, but have it all visible by
default.

------
Hello71

        $ 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)

~~~
striking
This is the most graceful CSS-degradation I've ever seen. The world needs to
learn from this manual in how to do HTML right.

If you haven't tried it yourself you're missing out. It's truly art.

~~~
jdjb
And yet the whole thing doesn't load if you block javascript. No content at
all.

~~~
elmerland
That's right, this was intentional. The content is loaded dynamically. I
thought this would help with mobile users, to reduce the amount of data used.

~~~
xorcist
I am actually on mobile, and the biggest problem on mobile is spotty coverage.
I click stuff and there is a slight animation but no more data shows.

I have no idea if that was because a TCP connection broke, or if this is just
a design concept and the actual data is missing. I have to reload the _whole_
page, then click down to the sub-heading I just opened and try again to know.

I haven't looked, but I get the impression you don't have any error handlers
(or maybe there are crazy high timeouts?). You should always, especially if
your users are on mobile networks, to put up some sort of spinner when loading
data and make a serious effort of handling the errors that inevitably happens.

------
cplease
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:"

~~~
elmerland
That's fair.

------
DanBC
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/NNmmxdx)

[http://imgur.com/qv6BPj4](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.

~~~
aw3c2
As someone who often makes these comments, were they declared offtopic
somewhere official?

~~~
DanBC
Here's a comment from dang. Someone made a good, technical, submission. For a
while the highest comment was about the design of the blog.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9238739](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9238739)

> A reader emailed to complain about how this and other HN discussions often
> become derailed by off-topic carping about blog design. I agree completely.
> Could there be a more classic form of bikeshedding? It would seem parodic if
> it weren't sadly real. This has become more of a thing on HN lately. It
> needs to become less of a thing.

> I don't mean to pick on you personally, or just on this one comment. (Your
> second sentence alone, by the way, would have been a helpful contribution.)
> The problem is the tedious stampedes such comments spawn.

This submission is a bit different because the design of the page is the thing
being submitted, but I'm aware that I too easily make comments about the
design of the page rather than the content of the page.

Some design choices are weird and prevent people from being able read the
content and I wish there was a way to provide that feedback without derailing
a thread.

~~~
aw3c2
Aye, that was my comment. :) I hope HN will come up with a nice solution to
allow these kinds of comments but have them be less distracting.

~~~
krapp
Arguably, a threaded forum by design encourages tangential discussions which
deviate from the topic the deeper you go. The problem in HN's case is all the
threads are open and entirely visible - which is one of the cases where its
minimalist layout works against readability.

I think the best solution would be thread folding (which I know is being
worked on anyway) where the default is that all threads are collapsed. Then,
off topic discussion wouldn't take up any more than a single post's worth of
space by default. Having it be a conscious choice to move deeper into a thread
also ensures that no one has to scroll past much content they don't care
about.

~~~
aw3c2
That would be incredibly annoying on touch interfaces and generally not allow
quick scanning of comments anymore. It would take a lot more time.

~~~
krapp
I suppose open threads by default would be more friendly, or maybe defaulting
to open for mobile layouts.

But it taking more time would kind of be the point - opting in to participate
rather than opting out by scrolling past content means fewer sarcastic
comments about how a thread is off topic and irrelevant.

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

------
fit2rule
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?

~~~
edwintorok
You can mirror with wget the original, it has the same contents AFAICT, just
different CSS:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9245753](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9245753)

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

~~~
elmerland
Yeah I could definitely do this.

If I were to add a collapse/expand all button would you still prefer for all
the sub-sections to be expanded by default?

~~~
dman
Yes I think so, the pane on the left already allows the user to control which
section they are reading. I would assume that once a reader is in a section
they would likely want to read/scan all of it. Excellent work by the way!

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

~~~
elmerland
You are correct, this is just a restyling of the manual. Just curious, what
did you think 'redesign' meant? I have mostly a front end background and I
thought I was using the word correctly. But I might have been wrong.

~~~
samatman
Redesigning the GNU C Library would be, well, redesigning the GNU C Library.

What you've done is redesign the GNU C Library manual, HTML edition. Which you
have done well, IMHO. It doesn't seem to involve refactoring C code.

------
notdang
Doesn't work without javascript

------
kasabali
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.

~~~
elmerland
Thats a great idea! This project was somewhat of a proof of concept. Maybe I
will refine and apply it to other manual. Thanks!

PS: I couldn't find the local search function that you mentioned. Can you put
a link so that I can see how it works?

~~~
kasabali
Sure. Python documentation in
[https://docs.python.org/3/archives/python-3.4.3-docs-
html.zi...](https://docs.python.org/3/archives/python-3.4.3-docs-html.zip) is
a good example. You can extract it anywhere and search just works without
needing any server side components.

