Document width discussion

[twiss]

After we have #235, we could set a width or a max-width on the editor.

	width	max-width	neither
Pros	WYSIWYG out of your printer	[desktop] WYSIWYG out of your printer
Cons	[mobile] Crammed, or you have to scroll	[desktop] Leads to the impression that the document has constant width	[desktop] Very wide documents are ugly
	Responsive layout is cool and html is good at it		[desktop] hard to layout, e.g., a right-floating image

[ferndot]

I think that the width should only apply to document formats that are intended to be paginated, such as ODT and DOCX. Other formats, such as HTML and plain text, might not be improved by this change.

Your width suggestion appears to be the best approach for desktop devices. Mobile is more difficult. How do popular mobile word processors like Documents to Go and Microsoft Office implement this?

[UPDATE] Apparently, Documents to Go does not have a set page width or pagination.

[twiss]

Google Docs, Microsoft Office Mobile, Zoho Docs and Quip all also don't have a width, except Zoho Docs in read mode (i.e. before you press "edit").

[ferndot]

So, max-width might be the best approach.

[twiss]

Notes about #241:

• You can't click beside the editor to focus (though that matters less in non-zen mode after Toolbar on the desktop #201).
• We should probably allow the user to set page settings (width and margins) at some point.
  • And/or default to something sane (locale- or computer-settings-related) for new documents.
• Somewhat relatedly, maybe we should put the max-width in the generated html file.

[ferndot]

Should we default to a max-width for HTML?

[twiss]

Well, I'm not sure, it's just that any document at 1920px width looks awful. Also, often when you're writing a document, you want it to look exactly like this, and don't care about responsive design aficionados.

Why do prefer no max-width for html?

[ferndot]

I guess it depends on our objective. If we want the HTML format to primarily be a "document" format, then the max-width is a good choice. For use cases like #214, the max-width might not be beneficial.

Somewhat relatedly, maybe we should put the max-width in the generated html file.

That might solve our dilemma!

[ferndot]

@twiss: does this sound good?

For new html files:

• Automatically add max-width
• Provide an interface to change the width

For opened html files:

• Use max-width defined in the files
  • If not defined, do not apply a width

Additionally, we may want to provide two different html "formats": document (max-width, etc...) and developer (vanilla HTML). And, we might want to put these into templates so that we don't have to include them in the JS.