On Wed, Dec 02, 2009 at 04:06:27PM +1000, Ruediger Landmann wrote: > On 12/02/2009 03:39 PM, Jeffrey Fearn wrote: >> Hi, I have been giving some thought to the issues around the >> formatting of articles vs books, and thought I'd poll the list >> for input. >> >> The question of layout seems to depend on what the fundamental >> difference between a book and an article is. The answer appears >> to be not much. >> > > From a writing point of view, the fundamental difference seems to > be one of scope; an article is typically narrow in focus, and > generally "shorter" than a book (yes, I know, "how long is a piece > of string?") > > From a publishing point of view, I think the key difference is > that an article is often not published by itself, but as part of a > longer work like a magazine, journal, or book; which is where (for > example), I think that the difference in how Publican formats > books and articles in PDF is useful. > > Questions of layout aside, the default structure produced by > Publican for books (including our lengthy "Document Conventions" > section) I think overwhelms a short piece of writing, like a "How > To", which is the kind of thing I've used <article> for up to now, > for example: > > http://docs.fedoraproject.org/readme-live-image/en-US.html > > http://docs.fedoraproject.org/readme-burning-isos/en-US.html > > Of course, I know that the same effect can be generated by > overriding the defaults (and you'll notice that in those two > examples, I actually /added/ the Feedback section, which is not > there by default in articles...) > >> If this is the case there is no need to have a layout that >> varies more than required by the minimal structural differences >> between a book and an article then. >> >> So, as a base, an article should look pretty much like a book >> ... but why bother having articles at all then? >> >> Because there are special types of articles that could look different! >> >> Article has an attribute, class, which can contain the following values: >> >> * NULL >> * faq >> * journalarticle >> * productsheet >> * specification >> * techreport >> * whitepaper >> >> Now these things may be worth styling differently, perhaps much >> differently, than a book. >> > > I agree; this has useful possibilities, because, like you say, > some of these (say, FAQ) might have practically no resemblance to > a book at all... > >> Maybe journalarticle should be dual column? > > And maybe somehow inherit the "parentbook" attribute if it's being > built as part of a <book> and display this somewhere on the page?
this would be useful. >> Perhaps a whitepaper should have extra wide margins for people >> to scribble in? I'm not sure what the difference would be between whitepaper and techreport, but I could see a definite benefit to formatting one of the classes as a slide deck, optionally (based on Makefile parameter) with a notes section. For example, with notes the format would be portrait. Top half is slide, bottom half is notes. If Makefile "notes=0", the layout would be landscape and no notes section. -paul >> A special cover page for a productsheet perchance? > > Or be laid out in landscape, designed to be folded in half? > > I'm sure other people here have other ideas about what we could do > with those specific formats... > > Cheers > > Rudi -- Paul Morgan <pmor...@redhat.com> RHCE, RHCX, RHCDS, RHCSS, RHCA Voice: 317-jumanji (317-586-2654) GPG Public Key ID: 0xf59e77c2 Fingerprint = 3248 D0C8 4B42 2F7C D92A AEA0 7D20 6D66 F59E 77C2 _______________________________________________ publican-list mailing list publican-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/publican-list Wiki: https://fedorahosted.org/publican
