dmd 1.061 and 2.046 release

[Walter Bright]

Charles Hixson wrote:
> On 05/15/2010 02:00 AM, Walter Bright wrote:
>> The D web site is rather pedestrian, but at least it's easy on the eyes.
> 
> *Pedestrian*??
> 
> The D web pages are a marvel of clarity and utility.  Compare them to 
> the Python web pages, which I rate a second best.  Things are documented 
> with relative clarity, one can generally find what one needs with a bit 
> of searching, even if one doesn't know what it's named.  Etc.
> 
> The D web site has only two minor (*minor*!) problems
> One is the search engine which doesn't work on local copies.
> The other is that one needs to disable google translation on local 
> copies, or everything loads too slowly.
> (The first of those is probably impossible to deal with, but the second 
> looks trivial.)
> 
> If by pedestrian you mean clean, clear, and easy to use, then give me 
> more pedestrian.

People often say it doesn't look professional. I agree it could probably use 
better colors, etc. But for this kind of web site, I think it's just wrong to 
use flash, javascript, or anything that takes a long time to load. I don't like 
pages that have a tiny bit of content surrounded by acres of flashy, blinky, 
hovering advertisements. I don't like websites that sacrifice readability in 
favor of a "look". I don't like web pages that refuse to reflow if the window 
size is changed. The site should print properly, and be mechanically convertible 
to a reasonably decent looking pdf.

The site needs to be friendly to search engines, and usable by screen readers. 
Yes, there are blind programmers, and at least one blind D programmer. It's 
obnoxious to make a site they cannot use.

I'm also old, and just don't like sites that use small fonts, cute fonts, blurry 
fonts, fonts with poor contrast, etc. They're hard, even painful, to read. When 
I was a kid writing letters to my aged relatives, my mom told me that they'd 
struggle to read typical handwriting, and that it's nice to use a typewriter 
instead. I always remembered that advice, and when I started using word 
processors for letters, the ones I'd send to them I'd always enlarge the font 
quite a bit. Web sites should avoid setting specific font sizes, so low vision 
users can enlarge it.

I recently completed a revamp of the digitalmars site that got rid of the table 
based layout in favor of using floating CSS layout. The result looks a bit 
nicer, and the printing should be much better.


> My sole problem with D is one that's probably impossible to address: the 
> lack of libraries.  When I need libraries, I usually end up using some 
> other language.  But it sure isn't the web page.
> 
> (DSource is marvelous, but most of the libraries listed appear to be 
> either moribund or morbid.)

The library situation hopefully will get better over time.

And thanks for the kind words about the site (!), it is nice to hear them.