http://d-programming-language.org/ 404 & small proposal

[Lutger Blijdestijn]

Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

> On 12/9/10 8:04 PM, Andrej Mitrovic wrote:
>> The D website is 404'ing for the library page:
>>
>> http://d-programming-language.org/phobos/phobos.html
>>
>> And I've had an idea to make the documentation website a little easier to
>> navigate. Here's what the docs look like with their old design:
>>
>> http://imgur.com/8Vdrj.jpg
>>
>> Now, that's quite a mess to look at. The text isn't aligned or anything
>> so it doesn't look that good, and you can't really tell which of those
>> names are functions, class definitions or enums, etc.
>>
>> So I just quickly sketched out what I'd like to see instead:
>>
>> http://imgur.com/0lufR.jpg
>>
>> Disregard the off coloring, font sizes, and my general lack of design
>> skills please :). The main point is to put the links in a table so
>> they're aligned and easier to browse, and maybe even categorize all the
>> names by their type (functions/enums/etc).
>>
>> I'm pretty sure adding a table is trivial, but I don't know if we can
>> automatically categorize all the names and put them in separate tables.
>>
>> Thoughts?
>>
> 
> Very nice initiative. I'm not sure how we can implement that easy
> without considerable effort; currently, the list is generated with
> Javascript using a flat list. To generate a more structured list, the
> programmer would need to insert appropriate cues in the documentation.
> 
> Andrei

With the json files dmd produces it can be automated, and you can do it the 
ddoc way (so latex and other formats would also be supported.) A 
disadvantage is that ddoc processor has to be ran twice plus an additional 
pass over the json is needed. ddoc support for this would obviously be 
better. I got this far (but it uses non-standard css3):

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/6777848/ddoc_index.jpeg

I'll share the tool when it's more complete, if this is something that is 
wanted for phobos I am willing to put it together.