Re: Free PageMaker-style program?
Ben Pfaff [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote (about emaulation of pagemaker): Lyx, as far as I know, isn't a page layout program, it's a word processor. Have the developers added page layout features? I can't imagine trying to emulate PageMaker-like features from within the constraints of LaTeX. As far as I know, TeX has a so-called output routine, that works each time TeX has eaten enough text to fill a new page. This output routine controls the layout of the page, and if I am well informed, the output routine is (like the rest of TeX) very powerfull and flexiable. Therefore, I think it would be possible to generate a page layout program based on TeX (like Lyx is based on TeX). Regards, Paul Huygen [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
Free PageMaker-style program?
Does anyone know of a DFSG-free program that works something like Adobe PageMaker? I'm kind of hoping there aren't any, because I want to write one. :-) -- Ben Pfaff [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
Re: Free PageMaker-style program?
On 20 Nov 1997, Ben Pfaff wrote: Does anyone know of a DFSG-free program that works something like Adobe PageMaker? I'm kind of hoping there aren't any, because I want to write one. :-) I'll be the first one in line for your new sofware! Actually there is a pagelayout program called Lyx that generates Latex output (not really a bad idea) but from the little that I have looked at it, I don't find the user interface very comfortable. Take a look and tell me what you think. I'm an old pagemaker user (emphasis on the old) and asside from several gross bugs, I will be happy when wine can run my 5.0 version. (There is a new version of wine that I have yet to test, so hope springs eternal.) Luck, Dwarf -- _-_-_-_-_-_- _-_-_-_-_-_-_- aka Dale Scheetz Phone: 1 (904) 656-9769 Flexible Software 11000 McCrackin Road e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tallahassee, FL 32308 _-_-_-_-_-_- If you don't see what you want, just ask _-_-_-_-_-_-_- -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
Re: Free PageMaker-style program?
On Thu, 20 Nov 1997, Dale Scheetz wrote: On 20 Nov 1997, Ben Pfaff wrote: Does anyone know of a DFSG-free program that works something like Adobe PageMaker? I'm kind of hoping there aren't any, because I want to write one. :-) Please, if you do, consider basing your tool on SGML. It would be most usefull to see a layout/editor that can work with generic content! Thanks, Jason -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
Re: Free PageMaker-style program?
Dale Scheetz [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On 20 Nov 1997, Ben Pfaff wrote: Does anyone know of a DFSG-free program that works something like Adobe PageMaker? I'm kind of hoping there aren't any, because I want to write one. :-) I'll be the first one in line for your new sofware! Actually there is a pagelayout program called Lyx that generates Latex output (not really a bad idea) but from the little that I have looked at it, I don't find the user interface very comfortable. Take a look and tell me what you think. I'm an old pagemaker user (emphasis on the old) and asside from several gross bugs, I will be happy when wine can run my 5.0 version. (There is a new version of wine that I have yet to test, so hope springs eternal.) Lyx, as far as I know, isn't a page layout program, it's a word processor. Have the developers added page layout features? I can't imagine trying to emulate PageMaker-like features from within the constraints of LaTeX. -- Ben Pfaff [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
Re: Free PageMaker-style program?
Jason Gunthorpe [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Thu, 20 Nov 1997, Dale Scheetz wrote: On 20 Nov 1997, Ben Pfaff wrote: Does anyone know of a DFSG-free program that works something like Adobe PageMaker? I'm kind of hoping there aren't any, because I want to write one. :-) Please, if you do, consider basing your tool on SGML. It would be most usefull to see a layout/editor that can work with generic content! That's an idea. I'm planning to write it this way: 1. Design a script-like language that can be used to fully specify how an output page should look. This will be the equivalent of TeX for desktop publishing. This step I am partway through with--but I'm still seeking ideas. 2. Write a program that translates this output language into PostScript. This will be, I think, the easiest part of the whole project--PostScript is well designed for DTP. 3. Write an X11 program that can be used to preview the output, analogous to xdvi for TeX. 4. Add editing features to the X11 previewer. After step #4 we have an elegant, powerful equivalent to PageMaker. IMHO this is *the* way to design such a program. Can someone point me to the SGML language specification? I know next to nothing about SGML. -- Ben Pfaff [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
Re: Free PageMaker-style program?
On 20 Nov 1997, Ben Pfaff wrote: Jason Gunthorpe [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Thu, 20 Nov 1997, Dale Scheetz wrote: On 20 Nov 1997, Ben Pfaff wrote: Does anyone know of a DFSG-free program that works something like Adobe PageMaker? I'm kind of hoping there aren't any, because I want to write one. :-) Please, if you do, consider basing your tool on SGML. It would be most usefull to see a layout/editor that can work with generic content! That's an idea. I'm planning to write it this way: 1. Design a script-like language that can be used to fully specify how an output page should look. This will be the equivalent of TeX for desktop publishing. This step I am partway through with--but I'm still seeking ideas. Hm, something like that is already done. Look at the DSSSL spec, it can completely specifiy the formatting of SGML documents (http://www.sil.org/sgml) 2. Write a program that translates this output language into PostScript. This will be, I think, the easiest part of the whole project--PostScript is well designed for DTP. This isn't done, if you could write a DSSSL engine for postscript you would be worshiped as a god : Unfortunately the above may not be well suited to an interactive formatting system like pagemaker. But if you could design an interactive DSSSL generator.. Well, lets just say -very cool- : Can someone point me to the SGML language specification? I know next to nothing about SGML.. Strange you should ask, I'm just finishing up a reasearch paper on the subject here is the bibliography: Berners-Lee, T., Connolly, D. RFC: 1866 Hypertext Markup Language - 2.0 (Nov/1995) ftp://ds.internic.net/rfc/rfc1866.txt (19 Nov/1997) Bosak, J., Connolly, D. W3C Activity: SGML, XML, and Structured Document Interchange (10 Jun/1997) http://www.w3.org/XML/Activity.html (19 Nov/1997) Burnard, L. What is SGML and How Does It Help? (19 Feb/1996) http://sable.ox.ac.uk/ota/teiedw25/ (19 Nov/1997) Cover, R. The SGML/XML Web Page. (1 Nov. 1997) http://www.sil.org/sgml (20 Nov/1997) Davenport Group. The Davenport Group (13 Nov/1997) http://www.ora.com/davenport/ (20 Nov/1997) Debian Documentation Project. Debian Documentation Project (13 Nov/1997) http://fatman.mathematik.tu-muenchen.de/~schwarz/debian-doc/ (19 Nov/1997) Kimber, W. SGML: SGML and HyTime (9 Jan/1997) http://www.sil.org/sgml/hytimeKimber9701.html (20 Nov/1997) Naggum, E. SGML: Erik Naggum's Brief Description (7 Feb/1995) http://www.sil.org/sgml/naggumWhat.html (19 Nov/1997) SGML Users' Group. SGML Users' Group History. (11 Jun/1990) http://www.sil.org/sgml/sgmlhist0.html (18 Nov/1997) Schwarz, C. (1995). Linux Journal Flexible Formatting with Linuxdoc-SGML, July 1995 Issue. Reprint at http://fatman.mathematik.tu-muenchen.de/~schwarz/debian-doc/linuxdoc-sgml.ps (18 Nov/1997) W3 Consortium. W3C - The World Wide Web Consortium (10 Nov/1997) http://www.w3.org/ (19 Nov/1997) Jason -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
Re: Free PageMaker-style program?
Jason Gunthorpe [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On 20 Nov 1997, Ben Pfaff wrote: That's an idea. I'm planning to write it this way: 1. Design a script-like language that can be used to fully specify how an output page should look. This will be the equivalent of TeX for desktop publishing. This step I am partway through with--but I'm still seeking ideas. Hm, something like that is already done. Look at the DSSSL spec, it can completely specifiy the formatting of SGML documents (http://www.sil.org/sgml) I looked at this and I don't think DSSSL is what I want. Sure, it describes the contents of a page quite nicely--but it's Turing complete; it's not suitable for a interactive editing tool. 2. Write a program that translates this output language into PostScript. This will be, I think, the easiest part of the whole project--PostScript is well designed for DTP. This isn't done, if you could write a DSSSL engine for postscript you would be worshiped as a god : I think I will leave the god business to someone with a bigger ego :-) Unfortunately the above may not be well suited to an interactive formatting system like pagemaker. But if you could design an interactive DSSSL generator.. Well, lets just say -very cool- : I'll keep the idea in mind but it's not what I was thinking about originally. Still, it's intriguing... -- Ben Pfaff [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
Re: Free PageMaker-style program?
On 20 Nov 1997, Ben Pfaff wrote: Jason Gunthorpe [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On 20 Nov 1997, Ben Pfaff wrote: That's an idea. I'm planning to write it this way: 1. Design a script-like language that can be used to fully specify how an output page should look. This will be the equivalent of TeX for desktop publishing. This step I am partway through with--but I'm still seeking ideas. Hm, something like that is already done. Look at the DSSSL spec, it can completely specifiy the formatting of SGML documents (http://www.sil.org/sgml) I looked at this and I don't think DSSSL is what I want. Sure, it describes the contents of a page quite nicely--but it's Turing ~~ complete; it's not suitable for a interactive editing tool. ERm, DSSSL doesn't define the contents of a page, that is something like PostScript. DSSSL is a style sheet language and in simple terms tells the DSSSL processor what text marked with tags looks like. The rendering section of a web browser can be expressed using DSSSL. SGML covers the markup and tagging aspect of text and HyTime covers the hypertext and referencing aspect of text. If you look at a publishing program like Page Maker you see there are three things it can do: 1 - Assign styles to blocks of text 2 - Assign priting attributes to styles (bold, etc) 3 - Render the text + attributes on screen Things like graphics, frames and such are a part of 1 (think HTML which is an application of SGML). SGML nicely covers storage for item 1. DSSSL deals with the storage for 2, you provide a nice GUI for doing things like makeing the Heading text a 12pt Bold font. A DSSSL Engine takes the stored SGML and DSSSL files and renders them on screen or into PostScript. [ I use the term storage to refer to the on-disk representation of the data you are dealing with. ] Pretty much every publishing thing I can think of can be delt with by the combination of a complete DSSSL+SGML engine. All a Page Layout tool like page maker does is provide a snazzy GUI so you can create the DSSSL and SGML data files. The thing is, SGML, DSSSL and HyTime are amazingly general. There is very little text processing that they cannot deal with when combined. Of course the huge benifit from using standard file formats for your Style and Document storage is that you do not tie the user to your program, but give them the freedom to use anything which complies to the ISO standards. The only trouble is such a tool would only be able to deal with a very specific form of DSSSL data files to enable interactive editing of the style data... Jason -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
Re: Free PageMaker-style program?
Thanks for the concise summary of what SGML and DSSSL are and how they relate to a PageMaker-type tool. Jason Gunthorpe [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: The thing is, SGML, DSSSL and HyTime are amazingly general. There is very little text processing that they cannot deal with when combined. Of course the huge benifit from using standard file formats for your Style and Document storage is that you do not tie the user to your program, but give them the freedom to use anything which complies to the ISO standards. There is very little *text* processing they cannot do; but can they handle graphics competently? The only trouble is such a tool would only be able to deal with a very specific form of DSSSL data files to enable interactive editing of the style data... Yes, certainly. Am I correct in thinking that DSSSL is Turing-complete? -- Ben Pfaff [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
Re: Free PageMaker-style program?
On 21 Nov 1997, Ben Pfaff wrote: Thanks for the concise summary of what SGML and DSSSL are and how they relate to a PageMaker-type tool. Jason Gunthorpe [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: The thing is, SGML, DSSSL and HyTime are amazingly general. There is very little text processing that they cannot deal with when combined. Of course the huge benifit from using standard file formats for your Style and Document storage is that you do not tie the user to your program, but give them the freedom to use anything which complies to the ISO standards. There is very little *text* processing they cannot do; but can they handle graphics competently? Well, this is were I am way out of my field : But let us speculate. I know SGML can reference external data files, either through SGML identifiers or through application specific attributes. I also you know you can assign whatever data you like to a SGML tag. DSSSL can be extended to support non-standard extensions (See Jade's HTML output extension) so if something was needed that it couldn't handle then simply add an extension. I would be amazed if they didn't include some thought to graphics being included though... DSSSL is a large language so something must be hidden in there someplace! The only trouble is such a tool would only be able to deal with a very specific form of DSSSL data files to enable interactive editing of the style data... Yes, certainly. Am I correct in thinking that DSSSL is Turing-complete? I think I heard that someplace. I also seem to recall hearing that DSSSL was Scheme based. Another important thing to realize is that alot of the generated content in some documents like table of contents and so on can actually be handled by DSSSL, it can generate new text elements, re-arrange existing elements and many other processing needs beyond simple style. A truely usefull interactive tool would allow a combination of interactive style editing and hand coded DSSSL elements : Jason -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
Re: Free PageMaker-style program?
Jason Gunthorpe [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I think I heard that someplace. I also seem to recall hearing that DSSSL was Scheme based. Another important thing to realize is that alot of the generated content in some documents like table of contents and so on can actually be handled by DSSSL, it can generate new text elements, re-arrange existing elements and many other processing needs beyond simple style. A truely usefull interactive tool would allow a combination of interactive style editing and hand coded DSSSL elements : Scary. If I follow through I will have to learn Scheme, SGML, DSSSL, brush up my PostScript besides, *and* invent some clever new algorithms. Wait, maybe that's not scary--maybe that's just really cool. I don't know. We'll see... :-) -- Ben Pfaff [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word unsubscribe to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] .
