Michael Stutz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> I thought about how to make a document that would allow for constant
> insertion yet still have page addressibility, and what I came up with was a
> variation of the "tumbler" scheme of Ted Nelson's Xanadu:
>
> All sections (or chapters) would be assigned a number and end with a .0, so
> you would have
>
> 10.0 INTRODUCTION
> 20.0 PHILOSOPHY
[...snip, snip...]
> This way, as new things come in, they could be perpetually inserted in the
> document--just extend a tumbler, if need be.
Well, this seems a reasonable and workable organizational method, but
since the goal is to have an overall structure that is completely
flexible, why number the top-level subjects at all? Refer to them
simply by a title -- Introduction, Philosophy, Getting Started, Text,
etc. -- and use the numbering scheme within subject areas.
After all, if this continues to its logical conclusion, there should
be far more information than could possibly fit in any single book,
and this would allow any resulting books to be an appropriate mix (for
instance, the Text book -- no pun intended -- could contain the
Introduction and Philosophy sections, as would volume one of the Sound
book, and so forth).
Anyway, it's just a thought. I don't know that such a system would be
superior in any way to the one you propose.
On another note -- and this is entirely tangential -- what exactly
would go into the "Conclusion" section?
> Okay, now part 2, the typsetting platform. My first hunch was to do it in
> plain TeX, as this is what I'm familar with. I could come up with a groovy
[...snip, snip...]
> But the trouble is, for one, I'd lose the numbering scheme. Maybe no biggie
> there, but how to insert things into the text? If you do an insert, all
> section numbers would be renumbered, making an existing printout of the book
> obsolete. Also, I don't think the standard way LaTeX does chapter and
> section titles would be appropriate for this book. I would like recipies to
> remain one per page, and I'd like to add some plain TeX code to change the
> section headings (I _think_ this can be done) so that some groovy stuff
> could be added.
I would think that (in the short term at least) getting it to HTML or
other machine readable form is more important than print, although the
ability to produce print in a consistent manner should be planned for.
As such, for the time being, the specific numbering probably isn't as
important for subsections, and, well, that's one of the reasons I
could see for not numbering top-level sections.
> Both ways have strong benefits and strong caveats. Ideally, LyX would be the
> way to go, IF the default definitions of chapter and section could be
> changed with plain TeX code and if some way could be figured out to allow
> for dynamic insertion of documents (without an existing printed manual
> becomine totally obsolete).
I don't know what would be best. I'm just not familiar enough with
all of the tools available. In a way, even TeX seems to be too format
dependent (print only, more or less).
doubt
--
Douglas Triggs -- Sysadmin, Toolsmith, and... Other Things
[EMAIL PROTECTED], [[EMAIL PROTECTED]] http://www.lensflare.com/~doubt
