Re: Undesirable whitespace treatment in mail archive display

> On Jun 11, 2018, at 2:22 PM, Jonathan S. Katz <jkatz(at)postgresql(dot)org> wrote:
>
>>
>> On Jun 11, 2018, at 2:09 PM, Jonathan S. Katz <jkatz(at)postgresql(dot)org <mailto: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 <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.

Committed and pushed. Changes should be visible in that thread and as caches
clear.

I did some more research into the CSS directive Daniel posted and found that
“pre-wrap” can give us the same effect that we had on mobile before (though
long lines don’t look great) so I think we have as close to best-of-all-worlds for
now.

Please let me know if this adversely affects scrolling and I can look into adjusting.

Thanks,

Jonathan