Re: [AUCTeX-devel] Re: Web site update

[David Kastrup]

Ralf Angeli <address@hidden> writes:

> * David Kastrup (2005-04-17) writes:
>
>> This looks good.  Some minor points: I am not sure whether
>> preview-latex should get its own menu entry in the overview instead of
>> just being linked to from the "intro" and "features" page: it appears
>> strange to mention it separately from "features" since it is a
>> feature.
>
> In contrast to the other features it is not yet 100% built-in and
> still available separately which makes it special.

The separate availability is just passing in nature.

> So I thought a separate menu entry would be warranted, even if it
> looks a bit out of place.  I don't have a strong opinion an this
> one, though.
>
>> Then obviously it is strange that the screen shots for open and
>> closed previews show completely different areas of the text.  This
>> makes it harder to compare the effects.
>
> I was desparately searching for an example which is suitable for
> that.  It should show hard to read code in the untreated case and a
> clean display after generating the previews.  circ.tex does not
> offer this too well.  I might use the part shown in the first
> screenshot as well for the second but then you cannot see a section
> heading being previewed.

Feel free to edit for the sake of screenshots until headings and
formulas are close enough for a demo.

> In addition it is not really good that the file is written in
> German.

I don't think that the language is actually important at all here, as
we are showcasing the LaTeX.  The German text illustrates that the
package even works with foreign characters, even though this will not
be surprising to anybody that does not know how hard this actually
is.  If you think this is distracting, feel free to edit.

> Maybe I can find better examples on CTAN ...
>
>> I don't think that links from the small extracts to the whole
>> screen are useful: this is not a matter of thumbnails, and clicking
>> will distract from the reading.
>
> I was particulary after that "cinematic" effect of a short but wide
> screenshot.  This does not leave too much room for showing
> everything important.  So I'd like to stick with links to full
> screenshots.

There is nothing wrong with giving links to the full screen shot page
or so, but the current arrangement simply is disruptive for reading.
At the very least, clicking on the stuff should open the full view in
a separate window or popup frame.

>> I'd place corresponding screenshots of open and closed previews
>> directly after another without explaining text.
>
> I'll have to see how this goes along with the descriptive text.  I
> also thought about placing such before/after shots side by side.
> But this probably is not such a good idea due to the limited
> horizontal space.

Yup.

>> In fact, where JavaScript was available, I would be tempted to make
>> the change with mouse-over in the same place.
>
> Even if we could rely on JavaScript being present, I find it more
> illustrative to have both versions displayed at the same time.

Well, the preview-latex way is not to display both versions at the
same time, so it might be somewhat more suggestive to do the same
here.  Of course, if people print out the page, the results will be
less than thrilling then.

> The examples in the user's guide are all in grayscale and not
> particularly interesting.  I found some nice stuff in
> <URL:ftp://ftp.dante.de/tex-archive/graphics/pstricks/contrib/pst-vue3d/vue3d-e.pdf>
> (Warning: 3.8MB) but haven't yet installed all the necessary
> pstricks packages to actually generate a preview.  Also, many nice
> examples suffer from being cropped in the Emacs buffer which would
> not be the best thing for a showcase.

\scalebox{...}

IIRC

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum