On Tue, Sep 8, 2009 at 8:42 AM, Hussein Shafie<hussein at xmlmind.com> wrote:
> In your case, the CSS styles are found in:
> /opt/xxe-perso-4_4_0/addon/config/docbook/css/*.css, *.imp
>
> You need to remove "text-align:center;" (or better, override it with
> "text-align:left;" in your CSS customization file) in:
>
> alt {
> ? ?display: block;
> ? ?text-align: center;
> ? ?margin: 1.33ex 0;
> }
That worked; it was the last impediment on my way to carefree writing.
After years of futile deliberations, I am finally writing!
It's a book on chemistry, based on such an unconventional idea that no
"conventional" software exists to support the rendering of chemical
structures in it. So I put together this monstrous pile consisting of
docbook-xml, customized with dbtexmath (for regular math), and the
chemical structures are plugged in as "equations" through dbtexmath,
using the TeX package "ochem". All this is extremely messy and
fragile, but there is no alternative, and the result is neat and
orderly: all my source text is in one place and it is readable (no
proprietary or machine-oriented data formats), plus, xxe shows how
things look and how they hang together. I am urgently building a
virtual machine to preserve this environment while it is working.
If anyone faces similar problems with chemistry (or math), give me a
shout; I have it working, and my memory of how I got here is still
fresh.
>> This proved to be equivalent to the quick-and-dirty solution, although I
>> am left with the impression that I've performed a cargo cult act.
>
> I don't know that expression. I would say that you performed a brilliant
> improvisation when you were asked to play a score note for note.
"Cargo cult" is a brilliant metaphor for "mindless" or "religious",
graced on us by our distant cousins in the South Pacific, who were so
impressed by the U.S. troops invading their islands in the 1940's,
with all the goodies that the invaders brought with them, that a
remarkable new cult was born. I gather, it must be a much stronger
cult than everything we've seen before, because some of their prophets
are still alive, and they can not only claim they have seen the gods
and conversed with them, but they can present material evidence to
non-beliveres. So even today, the prophets' descendants clear patches
of forest for "runways", build bamboo "control towers" with spinning
bamboo antennae, in which they sit with wooden headphones on their
heads, checking on the imaginary air traffic headed their way. Crowds
gather in a daily ritual, ready to help unload the precious cargo,
that's expected "any moment now". And they have beautiful bamboo
copies of airplanes on the ground, ready for take off, in case the
gods summon them to a better world far away.
I get an occasional feeling that I'm building a bamboo airplane, from
messing with those mysterious config files.
> (No magic here, the stock XML catalog of XXE, located in
> XXE_install_dir/addon/config/, starts with:
> ---
> ?<rewriteURI uriStartString="xxe-config:" rewritePrefix="." />
> ---)
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"
> All this is explained in great length in XMLmind XML Editor -
> Configuration and Deployment,
> http://jazz.localdomain/xmleditor/_distrib/doc/configure/index.html
>
> I agree that this document is boring to read.
It's not that it is boring -- it can in fact be very entertaining --
but I am wary of all new and unexpected entertainment coming my way. I
am distracted too easily. My interrupt stack is already hundreds of
levels deep.
The important thing is, everything works!
Thank you very much,
--Gene
