On Sun, 7 Nov 1999 09:21:11 -0500 (EST) mcmahill@mtl.mit.edu  wrote:
>On 6 Nov 1999, Nathan J. Williams wrote:
>
>> 
>> I was looking at the README.html for a bunch of packages, and found
>> the list of binary packages to be somewhat annoying to use. It's long,
>> and not sorted by either version or architecture. I figured that a
>> table with versions vs. architectures would be a good way to do this. 
>
>I had been thinking the same thing.

I've just been thinking that a different layout would be more readable,
but not that a table is necessarily the way to go.

>> The big downside I see to this patch is that it makes the pages much
>> less readable with non-table-aware browsers (Lynx, for example). I
>
>yeah, this is a fairly big downside.  

There are ways to build tables to make them degrade gracefully, or at
least somewhat gracefully.  I've done this ages ago, so I'll take a
look at this.

>> don't know what we expect the audience of this HTML to be,
>> really. It's been suggested that the people who look for binary
>> packages on a web page and the people who use non-table-aware browsers
>> may be completely disjoint sets.

Data point: I look for binary packages, and I use lynx, Amaya, and
mMosaic.  Which reminds me, I should roll those other two up into
packages...  When I'm actually looking for the binaries, I'm usually
running lynx.

>I'd disagree.  Some of my machines are pretty slow which makes lynx nice
>(plus, on pmax, mac68k, etc, there isn't a decent netscape), its also
>those machines when a quick binary install is quite nice as opposed to a
>long build.  For example, scilab takes 17 hours to compile on my Mac IIci.
>It took me several days to build the packages I usually use on my sparc
>IPX.  

I know where you're coming from there, I've got about 100 packages
built between my IPC and my mom's, but her box doesn't have any dev
tools loaded, and is sneaker-netted until I get the phone line run...

[...]
>visually, its almost there under lynx anyway, the packages are sorted by
>arch and then by version, you just can't tell which versions you have...
>
>what about organizing it like:
>
>
>alpha:   
>	1.4     mpg123-0.59q
>
>amiga:
>	1.4     mpg123-0.59q
>	1.3.3   mpg123-0.59o
>	1.3     mpg123-0.59k
>
>etc..
>
>its still somewhat long vertically compared to your table, but is sorted
>in a much easier fashion than the current approach.

Kinda, sorta like a Definition List, only not. :-)  Something like
this could be done with nested <ul>s, but not mixed with a table.
So something like:

* alpha:
  - 1.4 mpg123-0.59q
* amiga:
  - 1.4 mpg123-0.59q
  - 1.3.3 mpg123-0.59o
  - 1.3 mpg123-0.59k

Filler (like &nbsp;) in the version field could keep things to fixed
width, but I'm not sure that's the Right Way to do it.

Must go think about this (and do backups, feh).
--
T. M. Pederson
salvage@galaxy.plethora.net