http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=711336

I hope not to be "accused" of being a late weekend XP whore: I would like to report an issue with the indenting of nodes, which is actually shared by any system that allows for arbitrary levels. (It happened to me with Disqus too, a CDP I use to add comments to my tumblelog, also implementing a hierarchical commenting system.) To put it briefly: the layout screws up when levels go deep enough.

As far as my last PMD questions/requests are concerned, it has always turned out that there was a setting already doing what I wanted if turned on or off, but I'm reasonably confident that it's not the case with this one: I am aware of the Replies header depth and Replies text depth ones under User Settings: I have them set to the maximum possible value, which is what I want as far as content is concerned. I'm claiming, though, that as far as visual representation is concerned, indenting by a fixed amount of horizontal space beyond some given threshold is not sensible, and either a fixed limit should be imposed or a flexible one, in terms of another setting. (I believe that if it is a matter to be taken into account, it may be implemented through css by supplying different classes respectively before and after the threshold has been reached.)

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Re: Too much indentation!
by swampyankee (Parson) on Sep 14, 2008 at 23:42 UTC

    Having recently seen a thread get to Re15, I've got to second that notion. I find it really difficult to read text that

    all
    looks
    like
    this


    Information about American English usage here and here. Floating point issues? Please read this before posting. — emc

      I wonder what it looks like. Maybe we should keep replying to the same note to get it up to that point :)

      It would be monumental to have an example in this very same node.
        Having recently seen a thread get to Re15, I've got to second that notion.
        I wonder what it looks like. Maybe we should keep replying to the same note...

        You have a long way to go. Rather than fill up this thread with junk nodes, I know that Why is the execution order of subexpressions undefined? goes down 55 levels, so let's just link to that one instead (plus it's an interesting thread in its own right).

        I believe it's the Monastery record. Try viewing it on a mobile phone!

        • another intruder with the mooring in the heart of the Perl

        Irony at its paramount :P

        I'm so adjective, I verb nouns!

        chomp; # nom nom nom

Re: Too much indentation!
by jdporter (Paladin) on Sep 15, 2008 at 12:01 UTC

    OTOH, I don't like the way threads are laid out fundamentally, which is that there is one table, and each node (of any depth) gets a row (technically, a pair of rows), and the content within those rows is indented depending on depth (achieved via nesting of <ul> elements, of all things!). I personally believe it would be better — more general and more stylable — to have actual page elements (<div>s, perhaps), one node per element, nested exactly according to the hierarchy of the thread. I think I have a patch for that around here somewhere...

    Between the mind which plans and the hands which build, there must be a mediator... and this mediator must be the heart.

      I personally believe that the monastery generally looks fine enough, especially with good css settings, which incidentally is not the case of the default ones. (Judging both in terms of my own taste and the comments I receive when I show some page of the site to "external" people.) But... however ignorant I am of web development in general, I think your proposed scheme is much more reasonable than the current one. I'm not a big fan of tables, anyway...

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