project structure and dissertations

* project structure and dissertations
@ 2007-11-01 10:11 Jesse Alama
  2007-11-01 10:19 ` Hans Hagen
  2007-11-01 19:11 ` Peter Münster
  0 siblings, 2 replies; 3+ messages in thread
From: Jesse Alama @ 2007-11-01 10:11 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: ntg-context

I'm unsure about an aspect of The ConTeXt Way and its application to my
current situation: typesetting a dissertation, namely: how can I take
advantage of project sttructure?

It seems natural to regard the dissertation as a project and the
chapters as products (which sounds strange to my mind, in this case).
But then I have no idea what would correspond to components; it seems
like excessive, unnecessary structuring to regard sections of chapters
as components.  And if sections aren't components, I don't know what
they would be.

Earlier messages on this mailing list suggest that projects aren't
supposed to be compiled; only components and products are supposed to be
compiled.  This suggests that the whole dissertation not be a project;
clearly I would want to compile the whole dissertation.

Another approach would be to skip projects and stick with just products
and components.  In this case, the whole dissertation would be a product
(which sounds right to me), and chapters would be components.

But then, if I follow that route, how would the logical structure
interact with the "typographical structure" (what is called
"meta-structure" in the ConTeXt manual)?  I want to say something like

  \startfrontmatter
    \chapter{Preface}
  \stopfrontmatter

  \startbodymatter
    \chapter{Introduction}
  \stopbodymatter

  \startappendices
    \chapter{Complex Proof that was Skipped}
  \stopappendices

  \startbackmatter
    \chapter{Colofon}
  \stopbackmatter

in dissertation.tex, to indicate the typographical/meta structure.  But then
where would the \component commands go?  Would it look something like
this:

  \startproductproduct dissertation

  \startfrontmatter
    \chapter{Preface}
    \component{Preface}
  \stopbodymatter

  ...

  or would I somehow be able to refer to the whole text of the
  preface and do something like

  \startproduct dissertation
  \component preface
    \chapter{Preface}
    \getbuffer{buf:preface}
  \startfrontmatter

  ...

with the whole text of the preface in a buffer?

I would appreciate any advice!

Thanks,

Jesse  

-- 
Jesse Alama (alama@stanford.edu)

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