[tei-council] Suggestion for a new Guidelines TOC document

[Brett Barney]

On May 15, 2013, at 11:15 AM, Martin Holmes wrote:

> I went for three columns because it gets more stuff onto the screen at a 
> time, on a normal wider-than-tall desktop screen; with your mockup I was 
> scrolling to find the bit I use most often, which is the back matter in 
> my case. In mine, I left the back matter over on the right because 
> that's where everyone is used to seeing it, but of course that's not a 
> good reason when we're redesigning.
> 
> I think it would be good to get some polling numbers on a couple of key 
> questions:
> 
> 1. Do we want two columns however wide your screen is, or do we want 
> three columns collapsing to two if there's not enough room for them?

I much prefer two columns, both in principle and in the particular instantiations we're considering. Pages with more than two columns take me much more time to figure out how to read--Am I supposed to scan vertically or horizontally? Is there a sequence here or is this an ala carte menu? etc. One of the things I hate about Facebook interface. At least there, though, the random access feel is arguably appropriate. A table of contents for the guidelines, though, I think should communicate order.

> 2. Do we want to keep Some Popular Sections?
> 

No

> 3. Do we want to include the alternative output formats (PDF, ePub, 
> Mobi) as list elements like the rest of the TOC (as in my mockup), or as 
> links in a horizontal list across the top (as in Kevin's)?

Horizontal list across the top--it gives more visual cues as to what's a TOC entry and what's not.

On the other matter of chapter names: I think Sebastian is exactly right about the nature of the problem with the title of chapter 3. "Common Features" or similar would be fine with me. Maybe this is as good a time as any to mention that I've always found the names of ch. 3 and 4 confusing: They seem to say what amounts to the same thing, and when I look into the text of each chapter to figure out the distinction I'm puzzled why their order isn't switched, since the stuff in ch. 4 seems to complete what was begun in ch. 2 and ch. 3 seems to start the work that carries on with ch. 5 and following. [All right, you can now release the hounds.]