I bet some of you would enjoy helping me think this all out and see what
can be created within and surrounding TeXmacs to facilitate workflows
involving creation and management of a series of documents with common
macros, services, and look-and-feel, that must remain stable and continue
to function even as the stylesheet and document production automation
services evolve over the course of the series, necessitating reference to
version-sensitive information from frozen and released documents.
I'm thinking of using this for legal writing; obviously best practices
indicates writing it in a form that is abstractable to any series of
writings with similar but developing styles... e.g. mathematics homework
answer workbooks, handouts, quizzes, or exams, civil litigation document
management. Once a document is filed for court, it may not be modified. In
order to freeze it in place, but make it still load up into TeXmacs and be
capable of producing the identical output as it did 2 years ago, the
document needs to reference a stable version of the local package.ts files
it utilizes, or any scheme programs it needs. For example, I use a
legal-filing.ts and casenicks.ts to provide features, services, and a
common look-and-feel to all of the documents managed while I learn
paralegal writing skills and civil litigation procedure. I think I want
each large document that uses local package.ts style files to have its own
subdirectory, The subdirectory can contain a file of metadata concerning
the document; a bibTeX file would do nicely, right? One for the metadata of
this document, and one for the documents actual bibliographic information.
(Of course it needs Bluebook or McGill legal citation styles for tables of
authorities... or a link with ML-Zotero running in Firefox?)
When I cite statutes or caselaw, I want the PDF to carry a hyperlink to a
URL for quick and easy access to that information. The Utah Code is
available at a well known URLbase, and is displayed by a program that can
use the query-string to find a specified version of the statute, as it is
on the day the document is finalized or as it was upon the date pertinent
to the discussion regarding a particular statute or rule. Appellate and
Supreme Court caselaw does not change once it has been issued. Each have a
deterministic URI string that can templated based on variables that can be
gotten from a macro's arguments, so \TCS can create a presentable reference
to a title, chapter, and section of the statutes, wrapped with an \hlink,
and entered into the pertinent table of authorities in case one is to be
printed with the document. So far, first iteration, it looks good, but
hlinks must be done by hand and I've not figured out how to make my own
sort of bibliography or glossary lists for sets of authorities, such as
constitutions, federal statutes, state statutes, federal caselaw, state
caselaw, journal articles, or textbooks.
Each `part', `chapter', or `...' can be contained within a separate file,
all linked with the master document. This breaks the document tree down...
I'm hoping it will speed up the editor also. What are other users
experiences with that? I think maybe it takes TeXmacs way too long to
traverse the document tree. If it does that a lot, and it's a slow or
crucially central often-run algorithm, I bet it does that a lot more than
it needs to; perhaps some sort of memoization; intelligent caching for
shortcuts through the tree?; But for my own or some generally useful
common file organization for complex and compound documents of this
nature... I want a subdirectory per document with (?) arbitrary or
programatically managed (?) organization above that; Nice to have a
tag-cloud and good curation tools, prompts for initial meta-data,
automation. Within a document's subdirectory, I want a subdirectory for
each exhibit.
The metadata needs to securely record, via use of git features and
mandatory commits of document history entries that mark significant
calendaring, scheduling, and timelining events, such as document initiation
date, document_completion_date, filing_deadline, filing_date,
answer_deadline, reply_deadline, submit_for_decision_date,
document_type_tag_set (memorandum, motion, answer, reply, interrogatory,
request_for_admission, affidavit, of_petitioner, of_respondent),
document_name, civil_case_number, court_venue_designation, ...
Perhaps they can be managed in a document management system that uses a
revision control system like git for locally produced documents stored in a
deterministic filesystem structure, potentially utilizing cryptographicly
secure signatures and even some sort of double-custody sign-off feature,
and metadata concerning efiling; for document handling, managed review,
release, efiling, and archiving protocols; There can be no direct edits of
past revisions due to SHA hash etc that git provides; This is something
that log-structured record keeping systems which require an audit trail
such as court case-histories require, to prohibit edits of previous
entries, each is signed and each revision relies on the previous; like a
laboratory notebook.
A simple Makefile can do whatever it needs to do to export the latest or a
specific set of the version-sensitive inclusions from your git repository;
It can easily use templates (autoconf is overkill) to instantiate
subdirectories for the {$document_name}_Exhibit_{$symbolic_exhibit_name}.d
and each subdirectory will need to be made by hand when an
{$document_name}_Exhibit_An_Exhibit_by_This_Name.d/exhibit.tm for exhibit
cover-page and summary information, with the running page number, and any
files it includes somehow in the PDF output...
I want to insert actual PDF pages from scans or other documents, and have
the page numbering increment properly, and superimposed nicely onto each
included page in an unobtrusive footer; the footer should probably have a
solid white background and black text so the entire footer or relevant
portions of it is clearly visible and on top of the stacking order when the
page is rendered; It should not require much more work in every day use to
add an exhibit or chapter to a document than it takes to invoke a macro
that names and pulls in the exhibit cover page and included page-list.
Using cut-and-paste, it should be easy to rearrange the finaly order of
those chapters and exhibits, and to easily respecify page-inclusion-lists
for those exhibits.
Q: What if the included PDF has it's own bookmarks? They should be
reparented to be sub-bookmarks of the Exhibit, and landing-point-editted to
reflect their correct page-number within the including document... I wonder
what it will take to do that? I bet pdftk or something like that can do it
with some scripting. Maybe pull the bookmarks and landing zones for the
pages of the pdf(s) being included, and associate the bookmark name to the
landing zone on the page it references, and use those as input to the
routine that rebuilds the bookmarks of the final PDF after it has been
written out by TeXmacs? A variables I might like for configuration, if it
ever comes up, is: included_pdfs_bookmark_depth_limit.
Sometimes I mark up pages of the PDF with Xournal or an annotation capable
PDF reader app, but maybe TeXmacs own drawing functions can do similar
things, or more nicely display PDF annotation notes balloon content? It
might have the advantage of using the same fonts and scaling as the rest of
the document when you write captions on marked up documentary
evidence---selected pages from or entire copies of financial declarations,
written statements, photographs (possibly requiring special paper for
high-fidelity reproduction as an evidencial exhibit before a court,
etc.).--- Can a scheme program run from inside TeXmacs when the document is
updated manually read a short configuration file that specifies the
page-list for an exhibit, count how many pages, and create headings and
bookmarks at the correct page number or location within the final PDF. (?
PDF/A ?)
So, any ideas? What already exists within TeXmacs that can be utilized as a
basis for or part of a document creation and workflow management solution
like the above? What already exists as part of the revision control
support? The gpg signature support? What are "remotes"? What else?
Karl
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