[publican-list] Formatting Articles, a discussion of BZ #494147

[Jeffrey Fearn]

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.

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.

Maybe journalarticle should be dual column?

Perhaps a whitepaper should have extra wide margins for people to 
scribble in?

A special cover page for a productsheet perchance?

Speak up now or forever hold your peace as I purge the layout 
differences between books and articles and you kiss goodbye to the 
chance of having funky layouts at your finger tips!

Cheers, Jeff.

-- 
Jeff Fearn <jfearn at redhat.com>
Software Engineer
Engineering Operations
Red Hat, Inc
Freedom ... courage ... Commitment ... ACCOUNTABILITY