On 7/2/2014 11:08 AM, Gary Willoughby wrote:
> Here is one of my all time favourite talks from Steve Yegge (Senior Engineer at
> Google) at OSCON 2007 entitled "How to Ignore Marketing and Become Irrelevant in
> Two Easy Steps".
>
> This is sage advice:
>
> http://tvuol.uol.com.br/video/oscon--how-to-ignore-marketing--0402D0C90386/

Yes, Steve has a way of pointing out the obvious that the rest of us miss.

On Wednesday, 2 July 2014 at 18:32:44 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> BTW, Apple's site last time I looked at it was clearly designed for aesthetic appeal, but its use of grey text on a white background with a small font made it literally painful for me to read their developer documentation. That's a great way to beat developers away with a stick.
>
> What I'm saying is that above all the site has to be usable for developers - that means fast loading, easy navigation, well organized information content, and readable fonts.

I completely agree with that. Grey on white was a bad choice. I'm not sure how I feel now about their Objective C documentation. I think it got the information across quickly enough at least.

https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Cocoa/Reference/Foundation/Classes/NSString_Class/Reference/NSString.html#//apple_ref/occ/instm/NSString/initWithBytes:length:encoding:

I've been aiming for making text readable, using headings and navigation to make documents easier to jump through, sticking with things which will render quickly, etc. A lot of work so far has just been for formatting text.

On Wednesday, 2 July 2014 at 18:49:49 UTC, Tofu Ninja wrote:
> It has been commented on in this thread that major tech companies seem to always be following a fad, in that the prevalent theme seems to change quite often. For example going from high gloss(win7 era) to flat(win8 era). I don't think this is by accident(how could it be). To stay relevant, they must be perceived as having innovation even if that innovation only comes in the form of a face lift.

The problem with chasing the latest trend is that you're *always* changing and it's change for change sake. Yes the website needs an overhaul but i honestly think it can be done to look fresh and current, respecting the current D logo and identity (using reds) and as Walter said to serve developers with accurate and well presented text.

The 'new' design by w0rp (http://w0rp.com:8010/) does none of those things. He's well intentioned but even things like basic text layout and white space usage are completely lacking.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typography
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_space_(visual_arts)

We can do better.

Then provide something?

On Wednesday, July 2, 2014, Gary Willoughby via Digitalmars-d < digitalmars-d@puremagic.com> wrote:
> On Wednesday, 2 July 2014 at 18:49:49 UTC, Tofu Ninja wrote:
>>
>> It has been commented on in this thread that major tech companies seem
to always be following a fad, in that the prevalent theme seems to change quite often. For example going from high gloss(win7 era) to flat(win8 era). I don't think this is by accident(how could it be). To stay relevant, they must be perceived as having innovation even if that innovation only comes in the form of a face lift.
>
> The problem with chasing the latest trend is that you're *always*
changing and it's change for change sake. Yes the website needs an overhaul but i honestly think it can be done to look fresh and current, respecting the current D logo and identity (using reds) and as Walter said to serve developers with accurate and well presented text.
>
> The 'new' design by w0rp (http://w0rp.com:8010/) does none of those
things. He's well intentioned but even things like basic text layout and white space usage are completely lacking.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typography
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_space_(visual_arts)
>
> We can do better.
>

On Wednesday, 2 July 2014 at 19:51:29 UTC, w0rp wrote:
> I've been aiming for making text readable, using headings and navigation to make documents easier to jump through, sticking with things which will render quickly, etc. A lot of work so far has just been for formatting text.

A very nice improvement would be to use nested elements for formatting indentation in code examples. Then it will line wrap correctly when reducing the width of the browser window. I like to have my editor and the browser window side by side on a single screen, so it should render well on narrow widths.

I remember making a XSLT stylesheet for transforming generic XML code formatting into nested HTML once, it isn't all that difficult (but a bit tedious). Maybe the dparser can be used since it can generate XML from D code. It might be possible to achieve this with just dparser+XSLT.

I generally think one should consider specifying a unifying XML format for the site documentation and compile down other formats (markdown, ddoc etc) to that format before generating either webpages, docbook, open office, or whatever.

On Wednesday, 2 July 2014 at 20:04:50 UTC, Gary Willoughby wrote:
> On Wednesday, 2 July 2014 at 18:49:49 UTC, Tofu Ninja wrote:
>> It has been commented on in this thread that major tech companies seem to always be following a fad, in that the prevalent theme seems to change quite often. For example going from high gloss(win7 era) to flat(win8 era). I don't think this is by accident(how could it be). To stay relevant, they must be perceived as having innovation even if that innovation only comes in the form of a face lift.
>
> The problem with chasing the latest trend is that you're *always* changing and it's change for change sake. Yes the website needs an overhaul but i honestly think it can be done to look fresh and current, respecting the current D logo and identity (using reds) and as Walter said to serve developers with accurate and well presented text.
>
> The 'new' design by w0rp (http://w0rp.com:8010/) does none of those things. He's well intentioned but even things like basic text layout and white space usage are completely lacking.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typography
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_space_(visual_arts)
>
> We can do better.

I honestly don't understand your critiques, the proposal seems to keep with the general D theme pretty well. Yes its not perfect but its a work in progress.

On 02/07/2014 6:13 PM, Vladimir Panteleev wrote:
> On Wednesday, 2 July 2014 at 16:53:52 UTC, Brad Anderson wrote:
>> He should be contacted and asked if he'd be willing to assign
>> copyright to Walter. Does anyone have his email address?
>
> Walter and I have attempted to reach out to Martin a while ago with
> regards to logo licensing (triggered by the logo's deletion on Wikipedia
> - it was taken down once, but since then someone reuploaded it again).
> As far as I know, so far there has been no reply.
>
> Here's the information I have:
>
> Original post:
> http://forum.dlang.org/post/e3j72u$16n7$1@digitaldaemon.com
>
> GitHub profile:
> https://github.com/FunkyM
>
> Professional website:
> http://mirell.de/

The site where the original logo is hosted has a "mail me" link on its landing page...

heyitsallok@sukimashita.com

A...

On Wednesday, 2 July 2014 at 02:32:18 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 7/1/2014 3:02 PM, David Nadlinger wrote:
>> I'm not taking it lightly. The big issue I see with the current state is that D
>> simply doesn't have a consistent brand at this point, and never had (D Man,
>> anyone?). Frantically clinging to the current bits and pieces doesn't help us at
>> all, and neither do alarmist and inflammatory sweeping blows directed at a
>> honest (and only partially related) volunteer effort.
>
> The only thing that we have that is consistent is the current D logo. I do not understand the rationale for changing it.
>

That do not make any sense. Element are consistent as a ensemble.
Each element taken separately will be consistent with itself.

> There's so much that can be done to improve the website, I'm reluctant to put time and energy into redesigning the logo.

Someone did. It is agreed by most that it is better looking and
more usable than what we currently have.

On Wednesday, 2 July 2014 at 20:04:50 UTC, Gary Willoughby wrote:
> <snip>
>
> The 'new' design by w0rp (http://w0rp.com:8010/) does none of those things. He's well intentioned but even things like basic text layout and white space usage are completely lacking.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typography
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_space_(visual_arts)
>
> We can do better.

I'm sure we can do better. Right now it's just one guy (Aleksandar Ruzicic) doing an initial conceptual redesign, another guy (w0rp) trying to implement it, and a hell of a lot of people arguing over the minutiae of a redesign that has only just started. w0rp has said he welcomes any help offered. I'm sure he'd love to have some pull requests from someone with extensive experience like yourself.

Vague criticisms like, "basic text layout and white space usage are completely lacking" and then linking to wikipedia isn't helping. It's just being insulting and I don't understand at all why you are being so aggressive and directing so much anger at people who are all just volunteering their time trying to help build up D.

I can't take you seriously if all you are going to do is talk about how you've been a designer for a long time and worked with the best brands and this design sucks. Offer an alternative or offer to help (whether through pull requests or specific, concrete suggestions).

On Wednesday, 2 July 2014 at 10:18:29 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad wrote:
> However, I'd rather suggest doing a layout redesign where you avoid the rectangle and thus don't need the same kind of balancing act. Like having an off-white page with a dark colour side bar on the left and impose the white logo on top of it. Or embed the the D logo in a red circle (a very powerful symbol, think of how recognizable Lucky Strike branding is).
>
> I'll come up with a suggestion later.

Ok, here is my take on this:

http://d.progdocu.appspot.com/

I tried the red circle first, which looks much better, but takes up too much space.