Re: [Gnumed-devel] Inputfile

[Karsten Hilbert]

Hello Vaibhav,

thank you for your suggestion.

> Now with latest gnumed version, notepad is popping up with
> the latex file when you write consultation report.

Indeed. It is intended to allow last minute fixes to the
LaTeX code for LaTeX savvy people just before compiling the
PDF from the LaTeX code.

> This can be made more useful / easy by putting all preamble in
> separate file and then allowing only the desired text area
> to pop up. The preamble can be processed using common
> Inputfile .

This approach sounds very prudent at first sight. Jim has
commented extensively on this idea by inventing the concept
of "band" (as in "LaTeX snippets" to be banded together).

However, there's several technical difficulties with this:

- templates are entirely user defined, and in entirely
  different formats (OOo, LaTeX, gnuplot code, binary image
  data, AbiWord XML, ...) so GNUmed has no way of knowing
  what the preable actually is

- not every document template language supports includes
  (sure, LaTeX does), so a generic include facility would
  be rather difficult to devise

- each template must be just one file because ist exported
  from the database *every single time* a document is created

- using "magic includes" living outside the database on
  the local machine within "known paths" can conceptually
  work but is dependant on the filesystem layout of every
  single machine even within a single practice, which spells
  a nightmare for administration

I am open to suggestions. The concept of using includes
surely would be powerful.

It may help to clearly separate the user-modifiable parts
from the LaTeX-only parts by many lines of whitespace and
then something like:

\begin

... LaTeX gibberish ...



... say, 5 empty lines ...



% ===================================================
% ====== begin user editable section ================
% ===================================================

... here users will see actual clinical content, mostly
    generated from placeholders ...

... but this STILL needs to be valid LaTeX code ! ...

% ====== begin user editable section ================

... more LaTeX gibberish ...

\end


This way it is a lot easier to identify the editable parts
when notepad.exe pops up.

Karsten
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