6 ms·

In a sense OP wants E-ink screens and org/vimwiki/markdown. Styling is where the problem it claims to criticize begins; if you want a truly accessible hypertext

by d-lisp 3y ago

In a sense OP wants E-ink screens and org/vimwiki/markdown. Styling is where the problem it claims to criticize begins; if you want a truly accessible hypertext book, then you don't need styling, the user should be in charge of this, and the default theme would be whatever easily readable font, black on white, headings 36pt bold, paragraphs 14pt regular, every elements as blocks. Epub, in usage, is actually a cool format and I almost prefer this type of "browsing" experience than what websites proposes. Or maybe OP wants higher level CSS and HTML, and this is a problem because this leads to the invention of a new language with yet another complex ontology that claims to be "simpler than its lower level counterpart" but is not. Of course you could create some markdown with basic styling options, but I am pretty sure learning basic html and css is not that more complex than learning that specific markdown and how to operate it to finally get a website served on a specific server. Web and styling became complex exactly when occurred the encounter between what was styling on the web in the 2000s, the emergence of the nowadays variety of devices that are able to browse it and the actual way people interacted with smartphones. Today our browsers are almost OSes and it's almost like the complexity of what you can share with them is superior than the complexity of you could create on a 1990 pc natively. I mean, you can run godot engine on your browser : you can develop prototypes of projects with your friends just for fun, create your own private platform for communicating with people you like. I notice a lot of hate toward JS, but honestly when I first stumbled upon it I felt like a dream came true; it gives you the power to create experiences and share them almost effortlessly, and the fact that bigTechs decided to make boring websites on crazy over-engineered frameworks doesn't change anything to this.

soerxpso 3y ago
> I notice a lot of hate toward JS, but honestly when I first stumbled upon it I felt like a dream came true; it gives you the power to create experiences and share them almost effortlessly The complaints about JS are almost never about the concept of a programming language that runs in your browser, and the upside you describe seems to apply to any language that runs in your browser.
- d-lisp 3y ago
  That's false, OP talks about that, many people wish the web to be static only and many people wants to be able to read pages "without js" and complain about the fact that they cannot read a page without js.
- bee_rider 3y ago
  The only languages browsers should understand are markup languages, scripting and programming: no, none of that. Documents, not programs.
  - ToucanLoucan 3y ago
    Why?
    - MrVandemar 3y ago
      Not OP, but the number of "documents" on the web that "require" programming/scripting that bring no value to those documents, is vast. I'm not talking about documents/articles that have useful embedded video, or informative interactive graphs and things. I'm talking about "documents" that require a multiple javascript libraries to load in order to inject a "<p>Hello, it's a nice day and I had waffles for breakfast" into a DOM. There is no "graceful degredation" with these things anymore; it's either javascript on, or no content, which is baffling and frustrating. It's not just a "get off my lawn" thing, it has real implications on energy efficiency, bandwidth, and most of all accessibility: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2021/01/the-unreasonable-effectiveness-of-simple-html/ https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2021/01/the-unreasonable-effectiven...
      - ToucanLoucan 3y ago
        > Not OP, but the number of "documents" on the web that "require" programming/scripting that bring no value to those documents, is vast. I mean, sure. But if our rubric is whether a technology being misused constitutes it having no business existing, that puts a shitload of tech on the chopping block. > I'm talking about "documents" that require a multiple javascript libraries to load in order to inject a "<p>Hello, it's a nice day and I had waffles for breakfast" into a DOM. You're misunderstanding the function. The function is not to distribute documents efficiently. The function is to place documents somewhere they can be distributed in such a way where the business majors can edit them without needing to pay a web developer to do it correctly. Hence the absolute plague of BMS systems, which are sold to the aforementioned manager/consultant vampire class so they can make the website pop and don't need to deal with a 20-something rolling their eyes at them when they ask for that.
marssaxman 3y ago
> it gives you the power to create experiences and share them almost effortlessly That's exactly where the hate comes from: I don't want you, the web designer, to have the power to create experiences, because you (collectively) use that power to force experiences on me that I don't want to have.
- d-lisp 3y ago
  I didn't express myself as "the web designer" nor I implied that I wished to share experiences with you. What I meant is that I can share experiences to my friends via the browser, which act as a kind of a simple prototyping platform. I want the power to create experiences for some people I know, in a niche setting, without intentionally inviting anyone else.
  - marssaxman 3y ago
    Oh, well, that sounds fine! Sorry to mistake your meaning. I wish you could have gotten what you wanted in a way which did not have to change the fundamental nature of the web.
    - d-lisp 3y ago
      Well, most of the websites that proposes an experience are often rather lacking information-wise, no ? Don't you know of any website that reads like simple text ?
  - nottorp 3y ago
    Yeah, the problem is everyone and their mother are "creating experiences" instead of giving me the info I'm actually looking for...
    - qup 3y ago
      The problem you're describing exists in your own expectations.
    - d-lisp 3y ago
galaxyLogic 3y ago
There's a difference between content that is meant to be communicated vs. "widgets" that do something on your screen. CSS wants to support widgets, therefore it is complex. Apps vs. Content. Web is for both but if you can and want to do just content it should be easy and simple.
1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago
"... the user should be in charge of this..." As a user, I choose textmode. I use a text-only browser as an HTML reader, works great for EPUB. No graphical fonts, no Javascript, no CSS, no color. Often I will save to .txt so I can read with less(1).
- marttt 3y ago
  I have done the same, very probably with the same browser you're using (links). Just curious, do you handle images (or graphs) in EPUB files in some specific way? Mostly, ebooks are perfectly fine to use without images, but not 100% of the time.
  - 1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago
    Skip the images. Below is a quick and dirty script I use to make a single HTML file from an EPUB file. It outputs a _script_ that when run will output the HTML files in the EPUB as a single file to stdout. It is not perfect, e.g., sometimes the order of the HTML files may need to be adjusted, but I rarely bother. I open the HTML file in links and optionally save as .txt. I don't care for UTF-8 or other non-ASCII characters. EPUB to single HTML file. #!/bin/sh test ${#1} -ge 1||exec echo usage: $0 1.epub; printf "(\n" for x in ${1-*.epub};do echo printf \'\\n\\n,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, "$x" ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,\\n\\n\' 7z l $x|sed -n "s/.* /7z x -so $x /;/nav.xhtml/d;/[tx]ml$/p"|sort -n done echo ")|tr -cd '[\\\12\40-\176]'"
    - marttt 3y ago
      Yeah, I had a similar script of my own, utilizing the fact that EPUBs are essentially zip files. Thanks for sharing yours. I'm a great fan of your scripts for text-only browsing etc.

by d-lisp 3y ago

soerxpso 3y ago

> I notice a lot of hate toward JS, but honestly when I first stumbled upon it I felt like a dream came true; it gives you the power to create experiences and share them almost effortlessly The complaints about JS are almost never about the concept of a programming language that runs in your browser, and the upside you describe seems to apply to any language that runs in your browser.

d-lisp 3y ago
That's false, OP talks about that, many people wish the web to be static only and many people wants to be able to read pages "without js" and complain about the fact that they cannot read a page without js.
bee_rider 3y ago
The only languages browsers should understand are markup languages, scripting and programming: no, none of that. Documents, not programs.
- ToucanLoucan 3y ago
  Why?
  - MrVandemar 3y ago
    Not OP, but the number of "documents" on the web that "require" programming/scripting that bring no value to those documents, is vast. I'm not talking about documents/articles that have useful embedded video, or informative interactive graphs and things. I'm talking about "documents" that require a multiple javascript libraries to load in order to inject a "<p>Hello, it's a nice day and I had waffles for breakfast" into a DOM. There is no "graceful degredation" with these things anymore; it's either javascript on, or no content, which is baffling and frustrating. It's not just a "get off my lawn" thing, it has real implications on energy efficiency, bandwidth, and most of all accessibility: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2021/01/the-unreasonable-effectiveness-of-simple-html/ https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2021/01/the-unreasonable-effectiven...
    - ToucanLoucan 3y ago
      > Not OP, but the number of "documents" on the web that "require" programming/scripting that bring no value to those documents, is vast. I mean, sure. But if our rubric is whether a technology being misused constitutes it having no business existing, that puts a shitload of tech on the chopping block. > I'm talking about "documents" that require a multiple javascript libraries to load in order to inject a "<p>Hello, it's a nice day and I had waffles for breakfast" into a DOM. You're misunderstanding the function. The function is not to distribute documents efficiently. The function is to place documents somewhere they can be distributed in such a way where the business majors can edit them without needing to pay a web developer to do it correctly. Hence the absolute plague of BMS systems, which are sold to the aforementioned manager/consultant vampire class so they can make the website pop and don't need to deal with a 20-something rolling their eyes at them when they ask for that.

marssaxman 3y ago

> it gives you the power to create experiences and share them almost effortlessly That's exactly where the hate comes from: I don't want you, the web designer, to have the power to create experiences, because you (collectively) use that power to force experiences on me that I don't want to have.

d-lisp 3y ago
I didn't express myself as "the web designer" nor I implied that I wished to share experiences with you. What I meant is that I can share experiences to my friends via the browser, which act as a kind of a simple prototyping platform. I want the power to create experiences for some people I know, in a niche setting, without intentionally inviting anyone else.
- marssaxman 3y ago
  Oh, well, that sounds fine! Sorry to mistake your meaning. I wish you could have gotten what you wanted in a way which did not have to change the fundamental nature of the web.
  - d-lisp 3y ago
    Well, most of the websites that proposes an experience are often rather lacking information-wise, no ? Don't you know of any website that reads like simple text ?
- nottorp 3y ago
  Yeah, the problem is everyone and their mother are "creating experiences" instead of giving me the info I'm actually looking for...
  - qup 3y ago
    The problem you're describing exists in your own expectations.
  - d-lisp 3y ago

galaxyLogic 3y ago

There's a difference between content that is meant to be communicated vs. "widgets" that do something on your screen. CSS wants to support widgets, therefore it is complex. Apps vs. Content. Web is for both but if you can and want to do just content it should be easy and simple.

1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago

"... the user should be in charge of this..." As a user, I choose textmode. I use a text-only browser as an HTML reader, works great for EPUB. No graphical fonts, no Javascript, no CSS, no color. Often I will save to .txt so I can read with less(1).

marttt 3y ago
I have done the same, very probably with the same browser you're using (links). Just curious, do you handle images (or graphs) in EPUB files in some specific way? Mostly, ebooks are perfectly fine to use without images, but not 100% of the time.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago
  Skip the images. Below is a quick and dirty script I use to make a single HTML file from an EPUB file. It outputs a _script_ that when run will output the HTML files in the EPUB as a single file to stdout. It is not perfect, e.g., sometimes the order of the HTML files may need to be adjusted, but I rarely bother. I open the HTML file in links and optionally save as .txt. I don't care for UTF-8 or other non-ASCII characters. EPUB to single HTML file. #!/bin/sh test ${#1} -ge 1||exec echo usage: $0 1.epub; printf "(\n" for x in ${1-*.epub};do echo printf \'\\n\\n,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, "$x" ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,\\n\\n\' 7z l $x|sed -n "s/.* /7z x -so $x /;/nav.xhtml/d;/[tx]ml$/p"|sort -n done echo ")|tr -cd '[\\\12\40-\176]'"
  - marttt 3y ago
    Yeah, I had a similar script of my own, utilizing the fact that EPUBs are essentially zip files. Thanks for sharing yours. I'm a great fan of your scripts for text-only browsing etc.