Colophon

§1 · Concept §

This site is set as a technical reference manual for a person · in the visual language of the RISC-V ISA specification, a vendor datasheet, and a Tufte-style book. The brief, in the owner's words: “A C program is nothing but bytes in memory. I'm interested in the stripped-down, non-abstracted, naked-truth stuff.” The site embodies that idea in section numbers, figure captions, bit-fields, register tables, and a “view the bytes” mode that hex-dumps any page's own text.

§2 · How to read it §

The header is a 32-bit RISC-V R-type instruction word (funct7 | rs2 | rs1 | funct3 | rd | opcode). Each field is a navigation link; the current page's field is filled and its bits read as set. Hovering a field shows the decoded mnemonic (e.g. LOAD research). The footer is a revision block. Margin notes carry section numbers and tables of contents; dotted leaders connect entries to their numbers, as in a printed manual.

§3 · Type & colour §

Body text is Source Serif 4 at 18px / 1.65, max 68 characters per line; labels, code, tables, and navigation are JetBrains Mono. Both are self-hosted as subset WOFF2 with font-display: swap · no CDN, no trackers. Paper is #F4F1EA, ink #14130F, links silicon-etch blue #1F4FD8; fuse orange #E8590C appears only for live, changed, or warning states. Dark mode is a true oscilloscope inversion. All text pairs meet WCAG 2.2 AA.

§4 · Build §

Built with Astro (static output), content in Markdown content collections plus JSON data files, math rendered at build time with KaTeX (no client JS), syntax highlighting with Shiki, feeds via @astrojs/rss, sitemap via @astrojs/sitemap. Interactions are standalone modules under 3 KB gzip, loaded only where needed; every page reads fully with JavaScript disabled. Deployed to GitHub Pages by a GitHub Actions workflow on push to master.

§5 · Performance §

Budget · home page ≤ 150 KB transferred (excluding fonts), Lighthouse ≥ 95 across Performance, Accessibility, Best Practices, and SEO. Numbers are measured in CI on every build · see the pull request that shipped this redesign for the recorded figures.

§6 · Errata §

Typing 0xDEADBEEF anywhere flashes the navigation word. This is the only undocumented behaviour on the site, documented here.