working on the dlang.org website

[Walter Bright]

On 7/23/2013 2:23 AM, Borden wrote:
> On Sunday, 14 July 2013 at 20:35:45 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
>>
>> 3. HTML, PDF, Ebook, and CHM outputs are generated from Ddoc.
>
> Walter, with respect, I know you're too smart to be saying something silly like
> this. Surely you know that ebooks and CHM are specially-compiled HTML files. To
> imply that DDoc, and not HTML, is the common denominator between these outputs
> brings me to the acme of frustration as I have said over and over again that, at
> the very least, ebooks depend upon good HTML output.

It's true that they are based on HTML output. However, and this is a big 
however, they need significantly different HTML output than one puts on a web 
site. This is currently accomplished by changing the macro definitions that Ddoc 
uses, and by carefully recoding the Ddoc source to use those macros. While 
generating ebooks is often billed as "just pipe your website HTML through our 
converter program!" the reality is that you'll get more or less utter garbage if 
you try that.

I've published several ebooks that also exist as web pages, so I'm familiar with 
the process.

> To this end, I have tried for months to help bring dlang.org up to HTML 5
> standard if, for no other end, to be able to compile the spec into an epub
> format. I even toed the github waters by submitting a trivially simple PR which,
> for the past months, has gone completely ignored.

I assume this one is it?

https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dlang.org/pull/320

I posted a response. (But in general, PR's that are flagged as "We can’t 
automatically merge this pull request" tend to not get much attention. Despite 
that, we can and should do better.)

Can you please make some PR's which illustrate your work in converting it to HTML 5?


> In the meantime, my offers on help with other dlang.org PRs have also gone
> ignored. The thread in which I keep offering to help (Dlang spec rewrite) has
> gone ignored. To argue that contributions are not languishing or that volunteers
> are not being ignored necessarily means that I do not exist.

http://forum.dlang.org/post/ypcykidvradkrhnobaey@forum.dlang.org

has quite a few responses; more than most threads.


> If I have learnt one thing in the past few months, it is that any attempt to
> dispute using DDoc to program an entire website is a fool's exercise. Despite
> vocal objections from the plebian masses, the DDoc architects and maintainers
> will stubbornly defend its usefulness. One can hardly blame them: wouldn't any
> of us defend code that we had carefully designed or write?
>
> Therefore, dlang.org will stay, for better or worse, in DDoc. It's not worth
> arguing. As for willing contributors, it seems to me that the maintainers have
> an agenda to which they are adhering. Contributions focussed on other areas are
> diversions.

Of course we have an agenda :-)

The arguments were (I thought) well laid out in that thread and responded to. 
Reasonable people can disagree - it doesn't mean that one side is irrational.