[Haskell-cafe] Bind the GAP barely legible?

[jack at jackkelly.name]

The editors of BtG appear to quite deliberately take a bold step away from the "normal" design styles people use when writing about Haskell. When someone is doing something a bit different, it might be worth being a bit more careful, concrete, and kind with feedback than usual. Recall that we almost didn't have Advent of Haskell 2020: the announcements derailed into arguments about the absence of an RSS feed and the organisers nearly threw it in.

In the spirit of the above, I'd suggest something like this to the authors:

- I really liked the overall content. It clearly took a lot of effort to collect, they managed to organise some really great authors, and there's stuff in there for different skill levels. Congratulations.
- The "fun" in the design is not _personally_ my style, and I do find it a little hard to get through. The good news is that the loudest stuff is mostly done outside and between articles, rather than inline. I like this because they get to have fun with the design, and I can read the articles.
- There are a few places where the fun makes the text harder to read (Rank'n'Roll, some of the callouts in the Dependent Types article)
- Some pages are difficult to read due to low contrast between text and background. Lightweight fonts can make this harder, too. (Examples: Pure Gold (p27) and Deriving All The Way (p13,14) (the body is easier to read than Pure Gold, but the lightweight song text I found tough).)

Suggestions:

- Select a standard font/size/weight for most article body text.
- Check text vs. background colours using something like https://contrastchecker.com/ . WCAG AAA is more than just text contrast, but this is an easy and objective check.
- Check the designs of callout boxes for readability. If using underlaid images, consider making them more subtle, or think about switching to solid blocks of colour with themed doodads on the edges. (Good example: p9 has easy-to-read callouts.)

HTH,

-- Jack

January 20, 2021 6:43 AM, "MigMit" <migmit at gmail.com> wrote:

> It's not just you; however, I have to admit I didn't know about GAP at all until you brought it up.
> 
>> On 19 Jan 2021, at 19:55, Viktor Dukhovni <ietf-dane at dukhovni.org> wrote:
> 
> On Jan 19, 2021, at 4:51 PM, Albert Krewinkel <albert+haskell at zeitkraut.de> wrote:
> 
> I don't think I quite understand the purpose of sending this
> message. BtG is not a community project, the contact info of the
> authors is very easy to find, and it is far too easy to interpret
> the mail as an opinionated rant about design choices.
> 
> If you are interested in changing their concept (which,
> personally, I'd be sad to see happening), why not contact the
> authors?
>> Well, as stated, I was wondering whether in fact it was just me,
>> or whether perhaps others potentially interested in reading the
>> content were deterred by the design. Perhaps there's indeed an
>> audience for the chosen design...
>> 
>> --
>> Viktor.
>> 
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