Re: Undesirable whitespace treatment in mail archive display

> On Jun 11, 2018, at 2:09 PM, Jonathan S. Katz <jkatz(at)postgresql(dot)org> wrote:
>
>>
>> On Jun 11, 2018, at 1:58 PM, Daniel Gustafsson <daniel(at)yesql(dot)se <mailto:daniel(at)yesql(dot)se>> wrote:
>>
>>> On 11 Jun 2018, at 19:52, Jonathan S. Katz <jkatz(at)postgresql(dot)org <mailto:jkatz(at)postgresql(dot)org>> wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Jun 11, 2018, at 1:47 PM, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us <mailto:tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Since we moved to the new website design, the mailing list archives
>>>> display all messages with leading indentation suppressed. This can
>>>> be pretty awful, eg in the code fragment here:
>>>>
>>>> https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/20180611170812.7ypf6xs6dlteo57j@alap3.anarazel.de <https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/20180611170812.7ypf6xs6dlteo57j@alap3.anarazel.de>
>>>>
>>>> Looking closer, I think it may not just be leading indentation that
>>>> gets lost; seems like *any* whitespace string gets smashed to a
>>>> single space, cf followup at
>>>>
>>>> https://www.postgresql.org/message-id/7382.1528737252%40sss.pgh.pa.us
>>>>
>>>> which certainly does not look like it did in my outbox.
>>>>
>>>> I assume this is just an ill-considered stylesheet choice somewhere
>>>> ... can we fix it please?
>>>
>>> Hmm…agreed. I’m going to check the old code to see how that was handled. This
>>> may have occurred when trying to make the archives readable across different
>>> viewports.
>>
>> The below diff will retain the whitespace included the post. It doesn’t seem
>> to make it less readable on smaller viewports (although more scrolling), but I
>> only tested quickly so more input is welcome.
>
> I did some testing locally and it does solve the whitespace problem, but
> introduces the following:
>
> 1. The line heights are not a bit larger, which could introduce the return of
> the “scrolling” problem.
>
> 2. We lose the mobile-friendly wrapping that was introduced.
>
> Looking at our mobile traffic numbers, I’d be inclined to solve the immediate
> issue of the whitespace problem and make it a bit harder to use the archives on
> mobile temporarily while looking for a better solution. In other words, we don’t
> have that much mobile traffic in the archives.
>
> I can tweak the line heights the make the scrolling not as bad, if not the same.
> I’ll experiment and once it looks like before push / commit.

Below is what I’m thinking. This should keep the whitespace and
continue to keep the scroll relatively tight. It also helps to not look as bad on
mobile, though it’s still not great.

If this is acceptable I can get it committed.

Jonathan

diff --git a/django/media/css/main.css b/django/media/css/main.css
index 6221d90..39358d3 100644
--- a/django/media/css/main.css
+++ b/django/media/css/main.css
@@ -768,9 +768,14 @@ h3.messages {
.message-content {
display: inline-block;
font-family: monospace, monospace;
- font-size: 0.8em;
- line-height: 1.2em;
+ font-size: 0.7em;
+ line-height: 1.1em;
margin: 0 auto;
+ white-space: pre;
+}
+
+.message-content p {
+ margin-bottom: 0;
}