[kde-guidelines] CVS

[Lauri Watts]

On Friday 29 October 2004 13.26, Olaf Jan Schmidt wrote:

> The accesskeys on html pages from the docbook sources are different from
> those defined for kde.org. Is it possible to change the dokbook->html
> confersion process to also generate all the accesskeys listed at
> http://kde.org/media/accesskeys.php? Adding those to docs.kde.org and
> later guidelines.kde.org would be really good for consistency reasons.

We can almost certainly do that.  I didn't try yet, though.  Is it acceptable 
if not all of them are present, but those present match the kde.org scheme?  

> Whether there are other accessibility reasons to have a seperate
> accessible verision depends a bit on how the "normal" html pages will be
> coded. I can only answer this after seeing this. Is there an example of
> the planned html code somewhere online?

The default version of the usability doc is aimed at developers, and as you 
may remember, one of the things developers wanted was to be able to see "what 
should i do" without having to wade through the "why should I do it that 
way".  To this end, there's some javascript functions added to the HTML 
results that hide and show parts of the content, when clicked.  Also some of 
the sections are moved out of the content into a sidebar.

The samples are still up, see here for a good example:
http://people.fruitsalad.org/lauri/igs/designing-a-menu.html

It works perfectly well in links, and renders in a logical order even without 
the javascript being available.  Getting the logical rendering order made the 
docbook a bit odd.  The 'click here to show rationale' will probably be an 
icon eventually, so it will be hidden from the text browsers more easily.  

Calling the 'all the content without the fancy stuff' pages the 'accessible 
version' is something of a misnomer.  They probably will be more accessible -  
but for people with motor skills problems since they require less clicks to 
get to all the content, rather than for people with impaired vision.

Accessibility is not their reason for being however, they are partly being 
created simply because some people do want to read directly through all the 
content without having to do any work to get to the rest, as if reading a 
book.  Also many people prefer HTML to PDF's, with things like decent browser 
navigation, and those access keys, plus the clickable links to things like 
API documentation, I can't say I blame them.  If a google search returns a 
result that points to a document available as HTML or a PDF, I invariably 
choose the HTML version.   

Personally, I think so long as the overhead is not too bad, we should be 
generating as many different formats as possible, there's an audience for all 
of them.  One of the most popular formats for the FreeBSD handbook (a very 
large document indeed), is the palm pilot version, since it's so convenient 
to have at hand from wherever you are.

Regards,
-- 
Lauri Watts
KDE Documentation: http://docs.kde.org
KDE on FreeBSD: http://freebsd.kde.org
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 187 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://mail.kde.org/pipermail/kde-guidelines/attachments/20041030/3845f430/attachment-0001.pgp