"Rene Rivera" wrote

[...]

> There are a variety of issues involved in this. From the POV of authors 
> having 
> a single style for all gives the feeling of having your own work being 
> subverted or ignored.

Personally when doing documentation I only want to be concerned with content 
and 
structure of the document. I prefer having look and feel issues taken out of my 
hands if possible so I dont  have to bother making my own stylesheets and so on 
which is extra work. Looking at documentation for recent reviewed libraries 
they 
appear to use the quickbook defaults so on that evidence it would appear that 
other authors agree more or less. The only point where L & F would concern me 
is 
if the defaults were so poor that they were unacceptable, say blue text on a 
bright red background and so on, otherwise I am quite happy to accept wharever 
I 
am given by style artists.

[..]

> have. Like Joel I think the design is somewhat drab and could use more 
> visually interesting design elements. I just didn't go that route because of 
> my desire to respect the previous "consensus". But the feedback I got from 
> doing the website design last year when I wanted to use different colors, and 
> interesting icons, etc. was one of "I just want the text" or "don't put 
> anything between me and the text". So it's hard to do visually interesting 
> designs with that kind of audience.

I would share concerns. The perfect documentation Look and Feel is completely 
invisible. It isnt noticeable. It does the job only of enabling the reader to 
best understand what the author is expressing. The one thing it should never 
ever do is distract from the content.

That said I like the document tabs on the sample. Very nice ;-)

> [2] _I do think we need to make all the documentation follow the BoostBook 
> design._ It's the least we can do for users to improve their "Boost 
> Experience". I also think authors would benefit from not having to worry 
> about 
> this aspect of their library documentation. After all it's hard enough for 
> many to do good documentation in the first place if they also have to worry 
> about making it look presentable, and not just making it readable.

Yes!

regards
Andy Little 





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