dmd 1.061 and 2.046 release

[Jacob Carlborg]

On 5/16/10 22:04, Walter Bright wrote:
> 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.

About the font size, I like the font size that the D1 site uses better 
than the one that the D2 site uses.

>> 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.