Re: belle page

[Brandon Ibach <bibach@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Quoting Sebastian Rahtz <sebastian.rahtz@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
> you could add a non-standard attribute, surely? easier than the full
> "page" object.
> 
   Yes, as I said, "non-standard extension to simple-page-sequence." :)
The question would be what is needed to support this in the various
backends.  That is the major problem I have in these discussions, as I
do not know any of the three "print" backends (TeX, RTF, and MIF) in
any kind of detail, so I can only speculate.

> I remember some years ago asking James Clark about this, and he
> demonstrated to me that it would be a nightmare for the TeX backend,
> because of things like footnotes, floats and sidebars which would all
> come out of sequence. Still, maybe it could work.
> 
   Perhaps he was referring to implementation of both the page and
column-set objects.  As I mentioned, I believe most of the real
complex stuff comes with the column-set object.
   I'd be interested in your opinion, Sebastian, on the idea of a
direct Postscript/PDF backend.  I know I've brought this up before,
some time back, but it continues to make sense the more I think about
it.  There would have to be a good balance of what is done in the C++
backend and what is done in Postscript itself, but I tend to think
that it wouldn't be too difficult to reimplement TeX's most basic
algorithms for line and page breaking, etc.  It just seems that TeX is
not ideal for DSSSL, given its orientation toward interactive
typesetting.  In fact, I daresay that the process is hindered by the
more advanced features of TeX that DSSSL FOs simply don't need.
   Just a thought process...

-Brandon :)


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