Re: make page-float and span:

[Horst Kucharczyk <horst@xxxxxxxxxx>]

At 10:45 AM 9/2/98 +0100, you wrote:
>Horst Kucharczyk writes:
> > 1. Is there any documentation on the page-float object?  Haven't found
>in a word, "no". it makes a floating object, no more, no less, and
>listens to the "span" characteristic (but does not obey it)

... the characteristic "placement" seems to be accepted also but with which
value?
Soit. The page-float object produces for instance a title and a small TOC
as we want it but on page 2 instead of page 1. It gets inserted at the
beginning of that page in the middle of the text flow. It looks nice, so
we're trying to find out how to make it go to the beginning :-).

> > 2. Our basic layout needs three or two columns. Span: doesn't produce the
> > wanted result via the Tex backend in the simple-page-sequence with
> > page-n-columns: 3. (Make page-float ) seems a good work-around. Is there a
> > way to make spanning work 'directly'?
>
>i am not sure i follow. what happens if you use page-n-columns: 3

With the stylesheets we use, we don't know why the spanning doesn't work
with the TeX backend, where it works fine with the RTF backend. But
starting of from a simple example and gradually adding  specifications we
can put our finger on points-where-spanning-no-longer-works-as-we-want. As
for the reasons we're in the dark?


When starting to write this message we found out that we actually have
several different phenomena:

for instance
<!DOCTYPE doc [
<!ELEMENT doc     - - ( section )+       --the top level element-->
<!ELEMENT section - - ( title | para )+  --section in the document-->
<!ELEMENT title   - - ( #PCDATA )        --a title-->
<!ELEMENT para    - - ( #PCDATA )        --a paragraph-->
]>
<doc>
<section>
<title>Title of this section</title>
<para>This is the first paragraph in this section.</para>
<para>This is the second paragraph in this section.</para>
<para>This is the third paragraph in this section.</para>
<para>This is the fourth paragraph in this section.</para>
<para>This is the fifth paragraph in this section.</para>
</section>
</doc>

<!DOCTYPE style-sheet PUBLIC "-//James Clark//DTD DSSSL Style Sheet//EN">
<style-sheet>
<style-specification>
<style-specification-body>
(declare-characteristic page-n-columns "UNREGISTERED::James
Clark//Characteristic::page-n-columns" 1)
(declare-characteristic page-column-sep "UNREGISTERED::James
Clark//Characteristic::page-column-sep" .6cm)
(element DOC
  (make simple-page-sequence
    page-n-columns: 3
    (process-children)))

(element SECTION
  (make sequence
    quadding: 'start
    (process-children)))

(element TITLE
  (make display-group
    quadding: 'center
    span: 3
    (process-children)))

(element PARA
  (make paragraph
    (process-children)))
</style-specification-body>
</style-specification>
</style-sheet>

If we don't put (element SECTION ...) spanning works correctly.
If we do, we just get the title. Why?
(NB: this one doesn't work with RTF)

The basic situation we work with is a simple-page-sequence 'made' at a
top-level element, with a three or two columns layout. The chapter like
elements RUBRIC are specified as sequences and they contain titels,
descriptions and TOCs that we want spanned. Right now when trying to
identify a major cause, we are discovering a whole series of strange
effects. We could put all this on an FTP server with the necessary comments
to save on bandwidth.

>? I'd expect this to work normally. i don't think page-float is what
>you want. it always makes a single float object spanning the whole
>page width. dont try and put a simple-page-sequence in it!

:-) now there's an idea

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
 Horst Kucharczyk                  		<mailto:Horst@xxxxxxxxxx>
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
 De Boeck & Larcier n.v.		phone +32 9 269 97 91
 Coupure Rechts 298		fax +32 9 269 97 99
 B-9000 Gent (Belgium)
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