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

[Ruediger Landmann]

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?

>
> 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...

Cheers

Rudi