FAQ page margin width issue

[Larry Hall]

Brian Dessent wrote:

> On cygwin.com, there are two versions of the FAQ page.  The first is
> <http://cygwin.com/faq/faq.html> and is the direct output of texi2html.
> The second is <http://cygwin.com/faq/faq0.html> which is the same
> content except the texi2html output is in a TABLE, with the standard
> Cygwin.com navbar on the left (also a TABLE, with the width="20%"
> attribute.)
> 
> I don't know about you all but I find this second "faq0.html" version
> nearly useless because there is (at least) one question that has a very
> wide "program output" inside a PRE block tag.  This causes the margin
> width to be about twice the width of my screen.  In the 'faq.html'
> version that doesn't use tables, this is not a problem since the browser
> renders the page sanely, i.e. everything -except- the one wide line is
> wrapped to the actual screen width, but there is still a horizontal
> scroll bar as that one section is wider than the rest.
> 
> However, when this content is included in a table cell as is the case
> with 'faq0.html', it becomes very unfriendly, since that one table cell
> must expand its width to fit the widest element.  In this case the
> margins for the entire cell are adjusted to fit this one wide line,
> which means that you have to scroll horizontally to read -any- answer
> longer than a sentence or two.  I can't possibly see how anyone could
> use this page in this format and not be highly annoyed, unless they have
> a >= 1600px width screen and/or small fonts.
> 
> The part of the FAQ that causes this is:
> 
> -----
> Why doesn't man (or apropos) work?
> 
> Even after installing the `man' package, you get an error like this:
> 
> 	bash-2.04$ man man
> 	Error executing formatting or display command.
> 	System command (cd /usr/man ; (echo -e ".pl 1100i"; cat
> /usr/man/man1/man.1; echo ".pl \n(nlu+10") | /usr/bin/tbl |
> /usr/bin/groff -Tascii -mandoc | less -is) exited with status 32512.
> 	No manual entry for man
> -----
> 
> Possible work-arounds:
> 
> - Add hard line breaks to the source file
> winsup/doc/how-using.texinfo:185.  This is the easiest fix.
> 
> - Add "<style>pre { white-space: normal; }</style>" to the faq0.html
> file somewhere.  This causes blocks of text inside PRE tags to wrap on
> whitespace.  Unfortunately, Internet Exploder doesn't do this right so
> this isn't a viable solution for 90%+ of the web.
> 
> - Don't link to faq0.html by default.  You get sent to faq0.html if you
> follow that path: cygwin home page -> FAQ link on left column -> "FAQ as
> one big HTML file".  At the second step in that path you're in a
> frameset, and clicking the "one big file" link leaves the frameset and
> opens this cruddy faq0.html.  I don't see why instead you couldn't just
> link to cygwin.com/faq/faq.html and stay inside the frameset (thus
> keeping the nav links down the left.)
> 
> - Find some other way to convince IE to not page-widen.  Good luck. 
> I've tried everything and I can't force it to work, other than
> specifying in pixels the width to the TD element that contains the
> offending bits.  That's obviously bogus.

Or don't use IE. ;-)

With Mozilla, the line you indicate is the only one that scrolls off
the right side of the page.  Actually, a quick check of IE 5.5 (yeah,
I know it's out of date but I don't use it so I don't care) shows me
the same result.  I know that doesn't help you much but...


-- 
Larry Hall                              http://www.rfk.com
RFK Partners, Inc.                      (508) 893-9779 - RFK Office
838 Washington Street                   (508) 893-9889 - FAX
Holliston, MA 01746


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