consistent style for sagemath.org and sage documentation

[Niles]

Hello everyone,

Over at asksage, I complained that the sage documentation bears no
resemblance to sagemath.org, and I for one actually did find this a
little confusing at first (until I realized that all python
documentation looks like this, by default). That complaint got a
couple of up-votes, so maybe I'm not the only one who thinks this :)

After a while, I decided to see how hard this might be to change . . .
as you would expect, it was totally trivial (at least for a first
pass). Here's a screenshot of some very basic changes, using the
colors from sagemath.org:

http://www.nilesjohnson.net/sage-style-docs.png

I know it's still not what a graphic designer would call "consistent
style" with sagemath.org, but I think it's nice. Does anyone have
reasons not to change this? If not, I can easily create a ticket and
upload the patch, but I thought a change that would be this visible
should be publicized a little more, and supported by more than just
me.

Oh, and of course suggestions are welcome, but are probably most
relevant after some initial patch is uploaded. Then I can say "that
sounds great, go ahead!" ;)

best,
Niles

[Timothy Clemans]

+1

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[William Stein]

On Wed, Sep 1, 2010 at 2:33 PM, Niles <nil...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello everyone,
>
> Over at asksage, I complained that the sage documentation bears no
> resemblance to sagemath.org, and I for one actually did find this a
> little confusing at first (until I realized that all python
> documentation looks like this, by default).  That complaint got a
> couple of up-votes, so maybe I'm not the only one who thinks this :)
>
> After a while, I decided to see how hard this might be to change . . .
> as you would expect, it was totally trivial (at least for a first
> pass).  Here's a screenshot of some very basic changes, using the
> colors from sagemath.org:
>
> http://www.nilesjohnson.net/sage-style-docs.png

That looks pretty.

William

>
> I know it's still not what a graphic designer would call "consistent
> style" with sagemath.org, but I think it's nice.  Does anyone have
> reasons not to change this?  If not, I can easily create a ticket and
> upload the patch, but I thought a change that would be this visible
> should be publicized a little more, and supported by more than just
> me.
>
> Oh, and of course suggestions are welcome, but are probably most
> relevant after some initial patch is uploaded.  Then I can say "that
> sounds great, go ahead!" ;)
>
> best,
> Niles
>

> --
> To post to this group, send an email to sage-...@googlegroups.com
> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to sage-devel+...@googlegroups.com
> For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel
> URL: http://www.sagemath.org
>

--
William Stein
Professor of Mathematics
University of Washington
http://wstein.org

[David Joyner]

On Wed, Sep 1, 2010 at 6:03 PM, William Stein <wst...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 1, 2010 at 2:33 PM, Niles <nil...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hello everyone,
>>
>> Over at asksage, I complained that the sage documentation bears no
>> resemblance to sagemath.org, and I for one actually did find this a
>> little confusing at first (until I realized that all python
>> documentation looks like this, by default).  That complaint got a
>> couple of up-votes, so maybe I'm not the only one who thinks this :)
>>
>> After a while, I decided to see how hard this might be to change . . .
>> as you would expect, it was totally trivial (at least for a first
>> pass).  Here's a screenshot of some very basic changes, using the
>> colors from sagemath.org:
>>
>> http://www.nilesjohnson.net/sage-style-docs.png
>
>
> That looks pretty.

Totally agree.

[Mitesh Patel]

A quick note: If you'd like to experiment with style changes, you can edit

SAGE_ROOT/devel/sage/doc/common/themes/sage/theme.conf

and rebuild the documentation with, e.g.,

sage -docbuild all html -j -S -a

[Rob Beezer]

Looks good to me too. Nice idea.

Did you experiment with the background color on the verbatim stuff
(doctests)? Looks like strings print in blue, so that probably
wouldn't be a good choice and maybe there is enough blue already. The
sick green has always been a bit jarring to my eye. Maybe a light
beige or cream? But not puce.

What color is your bikeshed? ;-)

Rob

[Jason Grout]

On 9/1/10 5:17 PM, Rob Beezer wrote:
> Looks good to me too. Nice idea.
>
> Did you experiment with the background color on the verbatim stuff
> (doctests)? Looks like strings print in blue, so that probably
> wouldn't be a good choice and maybe there is enough blue already. The
> sick green has always been a bit jarring to my eye. Maybe a light
> beige or cream? But not puce.
>

+1 to changing the green to something more pleasing.

[Harald Schilly]

On Sep 1, 11:33 pm, Niles <nil...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Here's a screenshot of some very basic changes, using the
> colors from sagemath.org:
>
> http://www.nilesjohnson.net/sage-style-docs.png

Nice, but some time ago I picked some colors for the website and if
I'll ever give it some refreshment, at least the basic layout and the
colors, I'll use the ones from here:
http://boxen.math.washington.edu/home/schilly/newColorScheme.html

so, your top bar probably: #1919b3 with white text
the light-blue area is #c8c8ff
"Test 4" for the headers
and if you are fed up with blue, use yellow/orange/brown for the fonts
or other elements. if this really goes in, let's flip your proposal
and i'm very motivated to give the website some more colors according
to the styling of the documentation pages ;)

And when you edit the CSS, there was once an issue reported with a too
narrow column on the index page here:
http://www.sagemath.org/doc/reference/genindex-K.html
(if it looks fine for you after scrolling to the right, make your
window smaller. the width of that element is set to 100% but since the
text strings are much longer, it overlaps to the right. either make it
wider or enable linebreaks. i don't know what is the best solution for
that)

i can also design you a better logo, just tell me the dimensions via
email and i'll create it for you.

H

[kcrisman]

> After a while, I decided to see how hard this might be to change . . .
> as you would expect, it was totally trivial (at least for a first
> pass).  Here's a screenshot of some very basic changes, using the
> colors from sagemath.org:
>
> http://www.nilesjohnson.net/sage-style-docs.png

That's a great start, nice to see how quickly customizable a lot of
this is.

Does this discussion belong (also) on sage-marketing, by the way?
Unified color schemes are a hot topic in that realm, as Harald implies
in this thread elsewhere.

- kcrisman

[Niles]

Hello all,

A ticket for this now exists at

http://trac.sagemath.org/sage_trac/ticket/9850

and it contains the patch with a screenshot.

As for "sick green", I've attempted to replace this with "light
sage". Aside from the pun(!), there's another reason not to stray too
far from the default: maintaining contrast with the many different
colors used for text in code blocks (orange, dark blue, light blue,
dark green, medium green, black by default). I haven't yet figured
out how to change them--it will probably be easy, but not in the same
way that it's easy to change the color of code blocks. Yes, off-white
or beige will probably be fine too . . . but now you can put your
suggestions with corresponding patches on the trac ticket ;)

thanks for reading,
Niles

[Niles]

On Sep 2, 1:59 pm, kcrisman <kcris...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Does this discussion belong (also) on sage-marketing, by the way?

Indeed; I'm forwarding it now.

Dear sage-marketing,

Here's the link to the beginning of this thread

http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel/browse_thread/thread/73e3c4c995577df0

I did try to make a version using the color scheme Harald pointed me
to, but I wasn't so happy with it and decided it's probably easier for
interested parties to tweak the colors themselves than to explain to
me what they're thinking. Here (again) is the trac ticket with
screenshot and patch:

http://trac.sagemath.org/sage_trac/ticket/9850

[Minh Nguyen]

Hi Rob,

On Thu, Sep 2, 2010 at 8:17 AM, Rob Beezer <goo...@beezer.cotse.net> wrote:
> The
> sick green has always been a bit jarring to my eye.  Maybe a light
> beige or cream?  But not puce.

Done. Please see the latest patch to ticket #9850 [1]. A preview [2]
of what's to come is also attached with that ticket.

[1] http://trac.sagemath.org/sage_trac/ticket/9850

[2] http://trac.sagemath.org/sage_trac/attachment/ticket/9850/reviewer-style.png

--
Regards
Minh Van Nguyen