Hi Critobal,
Although the DocBook stylesheet has empty placeholder templates named
'front.cover' and 'back.cover', those are only called when processing a book
element.
I can think of three approaches to this problem.
1. Create a book that contains just a book title and an article, where the
book title matches the article title. That's valid DocBook, but it might
produce artifacts like a table of contents and verso title page that you would
need to turn off in the XSL, neither of which is difficult.
2. Copy the template with match="d:article" from fo/component.xsl to your
customization layer, add a call to 'article.front.cover' before the main
page-sequence, and write a template by that name that generates an
fo:page-sequence prior to the main article page-sequence. Something like:
<xsl:template match="d:article">
...
<!-- add just this line -->
<xsl:call-template name="article.front.cover"/>
<fo:page-sequence [existing sequence for the main article]
...
</xsl:template>
and write this template:
<xsl:template name="article.front.cover">
<xsl:call-template name="page.sequence">
<xsl:with-param name="content">
[the fo:blocks that make up the content of the cover page]
</xsl:with-param>
</xsl:call-template>
</xsl:template>
3. The titlepage system for article automatically calls an empty placeholder
template named 'article.titlepage.before.recto' that is called before the
regular title page, but within the main page-sequence. You could customize
that template:
<xsl:template name="article.titlepage.before.recto">
[the fo:blocks that make up the content of the cover page]
<fo:block break-after="page"/>
</xsl:template>
This one needs the forced page break after it because it is included in the
main article page-sequence.
In either case, the content needs to be specified. The simplest would be to
copy the article titlepage content:
<xsl:call-template name="article.titlepage.recto"/>
If you need less than that, then copy just the contents of that template from
fo/titlepage.templates.xsl to your customized template and remove the elements
you don't want on the cover.
Bob Stayton
Sagehill Enterprises
[email protected]
From: Cristobal Vio
Sent: Monday, February 04, 2013 10:51 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [docbook-apps] docbook article with cover
Hi there!
I'm learning to use DocBook and I was trying to figure out how to make an
article with coverpage... Or alternatively a book without the need of chapters
(although i think I'd prefer the first thing) The xsl stylesheet scheme seems
so flexible that I thought it must be possible... but i was lost in tons of
sites on xsl stylesheet discussions...
I will continue my search, but I thought maybe i could just ask you (since you
are the one person that surely knows that already) if it was possible and maybe
if you had the appropriate reference for me :)
many, many thanks in advance,
Cristóbal Vio
Update:
I've continued my search and it still isn't clear to me if I need to do a new
xsl style or alter the dtd part concerning the article type.
Still hoping you can answer.
Thanks in advance,
Cristóbal
