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.
The difference you are talking about is user controlled content and not
formatting, there is almost no difference in the way the same content is
formatted.
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...)
Try adding the rest of the common content to your article, or removing
it from a book, and you will see their are only minor style changes,
like a missing HR, or slightly different formatting on a title, etc.
The change is so small there is no justification for having both these
tags, after all the only change required to a book would be commenting
out an xi:include or two.
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?
You need to build the garden before you plant the flowers!
Perhaps a whitepaper should have extra wide margins for people to
scribble in?
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...
But will they actually post about them or wait until we make decisions
and then bitch endlessly that they didn't get to have any input?
Cheers, Jeff.
--
Jeff Fearn <jfe...@redhat.com>
Software Engineer
Engineering Operations
Red Hat, Inc
Freedom ... courage ... Commitment ... ACCOUNTABILITY
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