Re: Basic documentation style for better reading

[Konstantine Rybnikov <k-bx@k-bx.com>]

I think 66 chars it too small number since this is technical documentation and it has code samples in it. Besides of code samples in technical documentation person often needs to skip things and scroll forward/backward, so "golden ratio" 60-70 symbols should be considered for non-technical text only. I would still prefer max-width 800px (+ centerize) as an improvement that we should start from that won't be too breaking.

On Sun, Mar 11, 2012 at 11:36 AM, W. Martin Borgert <debacle@debian.org> wrote:

On 2012-03-11 02:12, Kostya Rybnikov wrote:
> I'm trying to get started and read HTML docs and what I can say that it is
> hard to read in it's current view. So I suggest to improve reading process
> by adding small change on HTML generation: add style="max-width: 800px;
> margin: 0pt auto;" inside body tag. That would make a huge difference.

A few years back I would have answered: Let me, the reader, decide
about the text width by resizing my browser window.  Nowadays this
does not fit most peoples browsing behaviour anymore. Maximised
windows are more common, esp. on tablets etc.

It is common understanding for latin alphabets that 66 characters
are very convenient for reading. (No idea about Russian, Arabic,
Chinese...) CSS does to my knowledge not support "66chars" as
width.

Maybe "66em" is more or less appropriate for text?
What advantages and disadvantages have pixels?


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