| 14 Mar 2024 |
 @picnoir:alternativebit.fr | Nixpkgs for the language-specific build systems. | 12:23:54 |
 @johannes.kirschbauer:scs.ems.host | Good concern. Implementing a simple redirection endpoint is quite hard. because most of the manuals are just one single page behind a single url.
Anchor tags #section-name are not sent to the server. This means it is essentially impossible to redirect from the old link to a new location.
Because from a server perspective
https://nixos.org/manual/nixpkgs/stable/#__placeA__
is exactly the same as
https://nixos.org/manual/nixpkgs/stable/#__placeB__
| 12:28:55 |
| @johannes.kirschbauer:scs.ems.host |
When a URL with an anchor tag is accessed, the browser uses the tag to scroll to a specific section of the page without making a server request for the anchor. The server only receives the part of the URL preceding the #.
| 12:30:37 |
| @johannes.kirschbauer:scs.ems.host | * When a URL with an anchor tag is accessed, the browser uses the tag to scroll to a specific section of the page without making a server request for the anchor. The server only receives the part of the URL preceding the #. | 12:30:43 |
| @johannes.kirschbauer:scs.ems.host | * Good concern. Implementing a simple redirection endpoint is quite hard/impossible. because most of the manuals are just one single page behind a single url.
Anchor tags #section-name are not sent to the server. This means it is essentially impossible to redirect from the old link to a new location.
Because from a server perspective
https://nixos.org/manual/nixpkgs/stable/#__placeA__
is exactly the same as
https://nixos.org/manual/nixpkgs/stable/#__placeB__
| 12:35:24 |
| @johannes.kirschbauer:scs.ems.host | This means migrating to any form of multipage documentation will always break the external links.
And there is unfortunately nothing we can do about it. ( At least not something i am aware of ) | 12:37:46 |
| @johannes.kirschbauer:scs.ems.host | In my opinion, the root of our current issues stems from the overuse of anchor tags. This overreliance has led to regressions and breakages that we're now struggling to address. The longer we delay taking action, the more severe and complex these problems become, exacerbating the situation further. | 12:40:11 |
| @picnoir:alternativebit.fr | What's the motivation behind migrating away from nixos.org? | 12:40:16 |
| @johannes.kirschbauer:scs.ems.host | nixos.org is just a domain. I saw the dicusssion that we could host the content of nix.dev on nixos.org.
Migration is mainly happening at the content level | 12:41:53 |
| @johannes.kirschbauer:scs.ems.host | afaik | 12:42:14 |
| @picnoir:alternativebit.fr | Right! | 12:44:28 |
| @picnoir:alternativebit.fr | I was talking about
At some point we agreed to move the manuals to nix.dev, yes. I don't have the source right now.
I still intend to make it happen one way or another. I started in October and didn't manage to finish yet because of conflicting priorities due to too many responsibilities.
https://github.com/NixOS/nixos-homepage/issues/1251#issuecomment-1994193106
| 12:44:50 |
| @picnoir:alternativebit.fr | I personally dislike the multi-page approach. The manuals structure is chaotic and require ctrl-f ing your way through it. Splitting it to multiple pages breaks this use case. | 12:46:43 |
| @picnoir:alternativebit.fr | That being said, I won't die on that hill. I did not spend a lot of time contributing to the manual lately, I don't want to be a blocker for people actually trying to improve the thing. Worst case scenario, we still can generate a single-page documentation and move it to a custom domain unoficially. | 12:48:33 |
| @picnoir:alternativebit.fr | * I personally dislike the multi-page approach. The current manuals structure is chaotic and require ctrl-f ing your way through it. Splitting it to multiple pages breaks this use case. | 12:48:59 |
| @picnoir:alternativebit.fr | * I personally dislike the multi-page approach. The current manuals structure is chaotic and require ctrl-f ing your way through it. Splitting it to multiple pages breaks this use case and makes information less easily available. | 12:50:30 |
| @johannes.kirschbauer:scs.ems.host | In reply to @picnoir:alternativebit.fr
I personally dislike the multi-page approach. The current manuals structure is chaotic and require ctrl-f ing your way through it. Splitting it to multiple pages breaks this use case and makes information less easily available. Ofc we must offer a search functionality. Otherwise nobody finds anything. ctrl-f wont work anymore ^^ | 12:57:55 |
| @johannes.kirschbauer:scs.ems.host | Our let me present you the current search mechanism: "ctrl-f"
I wonder why google doesnt have his index as a single html file that way you could just ctrl-f and dont have to enter it into the server.
Ah okay maybe thats a bit sarcastic now 😂 | 13:01:18 |
| @johannes.kirschbauer:scs.ems.host | * "Let me present you the current search mechanism: "ctrl-f"
I wonder why google doesnt have his index as a single html file that way you could just ctrl-f and dont have to enter it into the server."
Ah okay maybe thats a bit sarcastic now 😂 | 13:01:32 |
| @picnoir:alternativebit.fr left the room. | 13:10:36 |
 toonn | I hope the search will be better than the one for the Nix manual. It always returns tons of irrelevant results and you have to hope what you're looking for is buried somewhere in the results. | 13:10:37 |
 @adam:robins.wtf | As a counter argument I find searching the one large page difficult and confusing. Because there is so much content, and very poor delineation between sections, I frequently am confused where in the manual the jump has taken me. That’s of course when I’m not on mobile because the all in one page is practically useless for reading the documentation on mobile, and crashes my mobile browser tab. If we had to choose one path, I’d vote for multiple pages plus search. Though maybe we can have both? | 13:56:18 |
 fricklerhandwerk | I'd also say that a condition to split anything into multiple pages is that
- There will still be a single-page rendering as an alternative
- All anchors are redirected at the client
We can't do better than partially relying on client-side redirects, but it works okay for the Nix manual. In fact, I'm not even sure why it even works, but an anchor like in https://nixos.org/manual/nix#chap-tuning-cores-and-jobs will correctly propagate from the server-side redirect to https://nixos.org/manual/nix/stable/ to the client-side redirect script.
Changing where the manuals are hosted should therefore not be an issue if done carefully.
| 14:07:43 |
| fricklerhandwerk | In reply to @johannes.kirschbauer:scs.ems.host
In my opinion, the root of our current issues stems from the overuse of anchor tags. This overreliance has led to regressions and breakages that we're now struggling to address. The longer we delay taking action, the more severe and complex these problems become, exacerbating the situation further. It's not critical as long as we don't change existing anchors and don't move files around without putting redirects in place. Just an annoyance which will keep adding friction. But it can be systematically addressed with the required care. It's one of these "someone just has to do it" cases :) | 14:14:51 |
| @johannes.kirschbauer:scs.ems.host | Yes we could build a client side redirect. This would solve the migration issue. But this means the client side redirect handler has to be installed into the potentially new root page of manual/nixpkgs/stable/ | 14:20:06 |
| fricklerhandwerk | In reply to @johannes.kirschbauer:scs.ems.host
Yes we could build a client side redirect. This would solve the migration issue. But this means the client side redirect handler has to be installed into the potentially new root page of manual/nixpkgs/stable/ Absolutely | 14:27:41 |
 danielsidhion | I think providing single-page + multi-page solutions isn't conflicting and satisfies more people and use cases, so it's definitely something that any multi-page solution should investigate at the very least | 14:58:21 |
| danielsidhion | Is the jitsi server for the meeting working? | 15:02:19 |
| danielsidhion | (it is!) | 15:03:11 |
|  NixOS Moderation Botchanged room power levels. | 18:45:33 |
