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

[Jeffrey Fearn]

Paul Morgan wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 02, 2009 at 04:06:27PM +1000, Ruediger Landmann wrote:
>>> 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?
> 
> this would be useful.
> 
> 
>>> Perhaps a whitepaper should have extra wide margins for people 
>>> to scribble in?
> 
> I'm not sure what the difference would be between whitepaper
> and techreport, but I could see a definite benefit to formatting
> one of the classes as a slide deck, optionally (based on Makefile
> parameter) with a notes section. 
> 
> For example, with notes the format would be portrait. Top half is 
> slide, bottom half is notes. If Makefile "notes=0", the layout would
> be landscape and no notes section.

There is a dedicated DTD for this 
http://wiki.docbook.org/topic/SlidesDoctype I've not used it myself, but 
it's probably a better fit than trying to shoe horn it in to the article 
stuff.

Then again I'm a compulsive shoe horner, as it were, so it wouldn't be 
out of character :D

Cheers, Jeff.

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