[Fwd: Re: DOCBOOK-APPS: <beginpage /> fails with fop xsl 1.60.1]

[Jirka Kosek <jirka at kosek dot cz>]

-------- Original Message --------
From: Jens Skripczynski <skripi at mail2003 dot skripczynski dot de>
Subject: Re: DOCBOOK-APPS: <beginpage /> fails with fop xsl 1.60.1
To: Jirka Kosek <jirka at kosek dot cz>
CC: Jens Skripczynski <skripi at mail2003 dot skripczynski dot de>


Hi,

as I said, I'm new to doc-book and don't know much about the structure.

So i have a lot of questions, I hope you can help me with some of them.
(like forward me to some web-ressources).

###########
# Docbook 

I'm used to latex, but xsl docbook behaves quiet different.
One thing is, I belief, that Formatting objects is new and
has not all features included.

I was anouyed, that there was not pagebreak after the sect1
sections. Well i found out, that I was looking for chapter, so I 
have to switch to book.

For my first week if find it very had to find information about
docbook. The online documentation about docbook, is just something
like getting started. (exspecially for xsl).

- What are your docbook sources ?

- How would you list a web ressource in bibliography ?
  --------------------------------
  <biblioentry id="gurps-athas">
    <author><surname>wrathchild at hippie dot dk</surname></author>
    <title id="gurps-athas.title">
       <ulink
url="http://www.secretmasters.net/wrathchild/darksun/";>GURPS Athas
  (GURPS Dark Sun)</ulink></title>
  </biblioentry>
  
  <biblioentry>
    <title id="athas-org">
       <ulink url="http://www.athas.org";>The Burnt world of
Athas</ulink></title>
  </biblioentry>
  --------------------------------
  I'm not too satisfied with that. But it is hard (like at those two
ressources)
  to get author, copyright, pubdate...
  
  This does not really relate to docbook itsself, where can i get
information
  about things like that ?

###########
# xsl

- using entities.
  Can i use entities (that are defined) like &nbsp;, &uuml; and they
  do appear in the output ? 
  Currently i mainly use &amp;uuml; or &amp;nbsp;
  
  ###############
  # Styling output

- What does <sidebar>  mean?
   I understand the documentation that the processor can render it in
two ways:
   ----------- sidebar ------
    text test
   ----------- sidebar -----
   or 
                         | text
                         | text
   Am I right ? Would it be hard to achieve the second part with xsl
stylesheets
   and FOP ? i have a book style that i would like to use. :)

- outputing text in rows
   
     HEADING (like sect1.title)
   
   text text    | ..  text test 
   continue...  | ..  
   ....
  
   I there a switch, command in docbook  or does this belong to xsl
  stylesheets ?
  I think there must be a switch in the docbook source, that tells xsl
how
  to render the next chapter. (e.g. one_row_text-with_sidebar,
two_row_text,...)

- Fop, pdf and <index>
  e.g. for
  <sect3 id="elf-run">
      <title>Elf Run [5 CP]</title>
     
<indexterm><primary>Advantage</primary><secondary>race</secondary></indexterm>

  I the html page i have in the index section sth. like
  A
   advantages, races, elf-run #page

  in the pdf output:
  A 
   advantage, 10, 11, 11,
 
  Index is not listed in the toc, and all the title disapeard. Am i
doing
  something wrong ? 

  The thing i really want is (in html and pdf)
  <title> elf-run</title> <cost> 5 CP </cost>
<prerequisite>something</something>

  rendered:
  <text-align=left><b><title/></b></textalign>
<text-align=right><cost/><prerequisite/></text-align>
   in one line 

  and later a table like:
   
  Advantage           Cost     page
   <title/>..........<cost>...<page>    (with the dots spanning and 4
continuing rows).
   
- html and pdf output: Table column graying
  like
  row1      row2     row3 
  row1******row2*****row3 (second line grayed)
  row1      row2     row3 
  row1******row2*****row3 
  I would love to switch this on and off, as for some table it improves
   reading, for others not.

----- Is this an overkill for a (bloody) beginner ?      -----


Jirka Kosek:
> Beginpage is here for legacy purposes -- e.g. you want to mark where
> page break was in printed version of document. But processing tools are
> not suppoused to create pagebreaks in places where <beginpage/> occur.
> 
> You can put some PI in place where you want pagebreak:
> 
> <?page-break?>
> 
> and add something like 
> 
> <xsl:template match="processing-instruction('page-break')">
>   <fo:blok break-after="page"/>
> </xsl:template>
*thx a lot*

> Maybe we can reconsider adding support of common PIs for page and line
> breaks into standard XSL stylesheets. Generally it is not good idea to
> specify breaks manually, but sometimes it's reasonable solution.
Maybe even an option (for pagebreak), with a number of emty lines.
(in latex \\[x] )
 
> > P.S.: I think it would be good to add to the index section on
> >       "http://docbook.org/tdg/en/html/index.html";,
> >       that a simple <index /> tells processor where to put the
> >       index. I searched for this hint some time.
> >       thx to Jirka.
> This is true for XSL stylesheets, but other processing tools may behave
> differently. TDG describes DocBook as general document type. Details of
> processing should be specified in documentation of particular processing
> tools.
ok, then to the xsl docu.

I think it would be good, to link to a compatability page, that
lists, what processor supports which option, rather than saying,
this option is not supported by all processors (Because, how am I to 
find out ?).

Like for index, I used google with ('docbook', 'xsl', 'index',
'use|make|create|...')
and because the mailinglist page has a link called 'index', nothing 
usefull appeared.

Well this was alot, mainly because i do not know how to look it up and
where
to search. For <index> i was trying for 2 days.

Ciao

Jens Skripczynski
-- 
E-Mail: skripczynski(at)mail2003(dot)skripczynski(dot)de

If Microsoft is innovative in any area, it is in creating new forms of
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