Re: Formatting chapters in Lout books

[Valeriy E. Ushakov]

On Fri, Feb 04, 2000 at 09:21:10AM +0100, Henrik Martensson wrote:

> * I need to format different chapters in a book differently. In
>   particular, I need a single column format for some chapters,
>   and a two column format for other chapters in the same book.
>   (This is a standard format for the stuff I am doing. The single
>    column format, with sidebars, is the main chapter format. The
>   two-column format is for chapters that are lists, for example
>   equpment lists, spell lists, and character lists.)
> 
>   Is it possible to set this up in a reasonably simple way? If so, how?

You can't do it "off-the-shelf", but with minumum hacking that should
be possible.  Also, your task is greatly simplified by the fact that
you generate your Lout documents and thus being user friendly is not a
problem for you.

With default "docf" I did the following:

    @Document
      @ColumnNumber { 2 }
    //
    @Text @Begin
    
    @BeginSections
    @Section
      @Title { ColWidth }
    @Begin
    # ... This section will be set in two columns
    @End @Section
    @EndSections
    
    @FullWidth { @BeginSections }
    //
    @Section
      @Title { FullWidth }
    @Begin
    # ... This section will be set in full width
    @End @Section
    @address@hidden
    
    @End @Text


The above hack doesn't have correct section numbers, as each
@BeginSection will start from @FirstSectionNumber - but that should be
tweakable.

Also note that a col-width section after a full-width section will
start on the same page, while a full-width section after a col-width
section will start on a new page.  Changing this, if at all possible,
will require changes to the "dsf" idea of page structure.


> * Single column chapters in the format I want to emulate have
>   sidebar text.  Lout margin notes aren't quite what I need to do
>   this. Rather, I need to set up a sidebar column with its own,
>   separate text flow.
>
>   Ideally, I would like to be able to tie the start of a particular
>   sidebar section to a section in the main text flow to ensure that
>   the sidebar section begins either on the same page, or as close
>   to it as possible without colliding with other sidebar sections.
> 
>   Is any of this possible?


I'm afraid this will require changes to "dsf" since what you request
is a different page model, i.e. a sidebar column doesn't accept the
same type of material that the "main" column.



> * I really need to set up a recursive system for chapters and
>   sections. For example, I have APA articles that I sometimes have
>   to print as standalone documents, sometimes as parts of an APA
>   submission and sometimes as part of an entire APA collection. This
>   means that using the current Lout book and document packages, the
>   same heading in an article may end up at different Lout
>   @Chapter/@Section levels in different situations. This makes my
>   filters unnecessarily complex.

I guess that you should be able to set up a style database similar to
refstyle and write a document format that will only provide @Section
but with its nesting level as a parameter.  You then will be able to
retrive various style bits from the database using the nesting level
as a key.

E.g. note that you can write:

     @BeginSections
     @Section @Title { ... }
     @Begin
     @BeginSections # !!! not subsections
     ...

Having predefined @SubSection and @SubSubSection is just a way of
packaging style bits.  Using database is a feasible alternative.


>   I read somewhere that there is a document package with recursive section
>   levels, but that it is not part of the standard Lout distribution.
> 
>   Is such a package available?

Hmm,  I can't recall hearing about one.

SY, Uwe
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