Okay, after sturggling to make business cards with a graphic in them, and
finding that embedding a placefigure inside a frame inside a combination
yields inconsistent and unfixable results (1), I finally got it working
using combinations, frames, and figuretext. Figuretext is less flexible
than placefigure, but fixes the problem mention in (1), IE, the weird
tabbing down/over of other placefigures.
1) Fix placefigure so it works inside combination, and other placefigures.
externalgraphic does work inside combinations, buuut, you can't have
laid-out out text inside a external graphic... Maybe I should try
tex-graphics?
2) Allow arbitrary n-by-m pagesetups for printing. Businesscards come out
as punchouts 2 wide by 5 deep on a US letter page. If I could define a
'business' card page and then lay them out for printing on such a page, I
would have had to use the frame/combination kludge. As it is, I had to
define a frame 3.5x2 inches, put my text & graphics in that, then put the
frames inside a combination. Works, but it's messy.
(1) By unfixable, the very first text/graphic would be layed out properly
inside the combination, but all the others would be moved down or over a
set amount. What's funny is the frames would stay put, but the
text/graphics inside would be moved down/out of the frames! Frames don't
seem to contain their contents very well. No amount of twiddling with
combination, frames, or placefigure settings fixed this. Frames also don't
seem to 'wrap' their contents very well. I needed the frame because I
needed it to make sure that each part of the 2*5 combination was exactly
3.5x2inches so it'd match up with the perfs.
Some other things
Showboxes is apparently bust wrt to the above too. Turning showboxes on
with any combo of combinations/frames/figures results in the boxes being
shown, but also clobbers the actual layout. Everything gets moved around.
Defeats the purpose, no?
Also, unlike the examples in the manual, when doing \hbox to 4.5{}
It shows the hbox straddling the entire textwidth, with a vertical line
drawn at 4.5in in. The boxes look/work nothing like the examples shown when
showboxes is turned on. Kinda like so.
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Also, \par inside a \vbox inside a \define causes NOTHING but problems.
Same with \\. It complains about missing } or other nonsense.
Daniel
