On Friday, November 21, 2003, at 01:36 AM, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> Michael Glaesemann wrote:
>>>> As Peter has pointed out, the CSS can handle a lot of it. It doesn't
>>>> have to be hardcoded into the SGML-to-HTML transformation. One
>>>> option
>>>> would be to use colors as well (I'm not talking a rainbow of fruit
>>>> flavors here :). In particular, I find italics often difficult to
>>>> read
>>>> on the web. I'll try to get a few styles worked up by tomorrow that
>>>
>>> I think it is the monospace italics that really look bad.
>>
>> I'd have to agree with you. Making them a color other than the text
>> (black) or the links (blue/purple depending on your eyes) would set
>> them off quite well. Serif fonts at small sizes can also be pretty
>> nasty, though this isn't an issue with the PostgreSQL docs.
>
> If we go with color, making them printable on a non-color printer
> becomes a problem.
Good point. A way to handle this is to use an additional style sheet
for media="print" that distinguishes between the
keywords/parameters/functions in a different way. If we make any
changes to how syntax is represented, the conventions page will need to
be rewritten, and an option would be to rewrite it in a way that does
not explicitly spell out the differences (e.g., "italics ( example )
indicate placeholders; "), but rather present a table or an example
showing the different parts. This way the style sheets will always be
in congruence with the notation explanation.
Just an idea. I think it's good to have some redundancy in
distinguishing these things. Not only for those without color printers
(poor souls ;) but also for people who have trouble distinguishing
color differences.
When I was experimenting with different color schemes, I thought about
perhaps matching the syntax coloring of my editor, BBEdit. However, I'm
sure not all editors use the same color scheme (the ANSI SQL language
module for BBEdit displays only blue (keywords), pink (strings), and
black (everything else). The blue would conflict with the current link
color, and I'd rather not use pink unless everyone else thinks it's a
good idea.) I'm interested in hearing what editors others use for
coding, and what syntax coloring schemes they use for SQL.
Michael
