FO and ConTeXt: my new wiki page

FO and ConTeXt: my new wiki page

[Paul Tremblay]

I have a new page on the wiki  

http://contextgarden.net/Page_layout

This page is my best effort at describing how someone who is used to FO
would do the same thing in ConTeXt. The page is just one of many I hope
to write on FO and ConTeXt.

I'm sure I got some things wrong, so any help would be appreciated.

One thing I was not able to do was customize headers and footers for
blank pages that end a part (such as a chapter). I need to include a
section in my page describing my inability to do this.

Thanks

Paul


-- 

************************
*Paul Tremblay         *
*phthenry@iglou.com    *
************************

Re: FO and ConTeXt: my new wiki page

[Adam Lindsay]

Paul Tremblay said this at Wed, 2 Mar 2005 02:04:26 -0500:

>http://contextgarden.net/Page_layout

Thanks for your contribution...
I would feel a bit better if you made the relationship to 
<http://contextgarden.net/Layout> clearer.

>This page is my best effort at describing how someone who is used to FO
>would do the same thing in ConTeXt. The page is just one of many I hope
>to write on FO and ConTeXt.

Perhaps you could make a family of pages like FO_Layout and FO_Fonts, to
make "The FO Way" clearer--these things are informative to people coming
from ConTeXt and XSL-FO alike...

This is from the page itself:
>ConTeXt has no equivalent to the FO attributes "margin-right" and
>"margin-bottom". 

"cutspace" and "bottomspace", respectively. I'll agree that the
documentation on layout stuff is now lagging behind reality, but there
are some sources for this information, like the list archives and:
<http://texshow.contextgarden.net/ts.rb?
lang=en&what=desc&if=en&cmd=setuplayout>

[sorry, I would go in and change the wiki myself, but can't at the moment.]
-- 
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
 Adam T. Lindsay, Computing Dept.     atl@comp.lancs.ac.uk
 Lancaster University, InfoLab21        +44(0)1524/510.514
 Lancaster, LA1 4WA, UK             Fax:+44(0)1524/510.492
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Re: FO and ConTeXt: my new wiki page

[Paul Tremblay]

On Wed, Mar 02, 2005 at 10:15:11AM +0000, Adam Lindsay wrote:
> Paul Tremblay said this at Wed, 2 Mar 2005 02:04:26 -0500:
> 
> >http://contextgarden.net/Page_layout
> 
> Thanks for your contribution...
> I would feel a bit better if you made the relationship to 
> <http://contextgarden.net/Layout> clearer.
> 
> >This page is my best effort at describing how someone who is used to FO
> >would do the same thing in ConTeXt. The page is just one of many I hope
> >to write on FO and ConTeXt.
> 
> Perhaps you could make a family of pages like FO_Layout and FO_Fonts, to
> make "The FO Way" clearer--these things are informative to people coming
> from ConTeXt and XSL-FO alike...

I see. So if I am understanding things correctly, you just want me to
rename my pages? So instead of having Layout, use FO_Layout?


> 
> This is from the page itself:
> >ConTeXt has no equivalent to the FO attributes "margin-right" and
> >"margin-bottom". 
> 
> "cutspace" and "bottomspace", respectively. I'll agree that the
> documentation on layout stuff is now lagging behind reality, but there
> are some sources for this information, like the list archives and:
> <http://texshow.contextgarden.net/ts.rb?  > lang=en&what=desc&if=en&cmd=setuplayout>

Thanks. I'll have a look and change the page.

Paul

-- 

************************
*Paul Tremblay         *
*phthenry@iglou.com    *
************************

Re: FO and ConTeXt: my new wiki page

[Idris Samawi Hamid]

> This page is my best effort at describing how someone who is used to FO
> would do the same thing in ConTeXt. The page is just one of many I hope
> to write on FO and ConTeXt.

Excuse my ignorance, but what is FO?

Best
Idris
-- 
Professor Idris Samawi Hamid
Department of Philosophy
Colorado State University
Fort Collins, CO 80523

Re: FO and ConTeXt: my new wiki page

[Paul Tremblay]

On Wed, Mar 02, 2005 at 01:41:32PM -0700, Idris Samawi Hamid wrote:
> 
> >This page is my best effort at describing how someone who is used to FO
> >would do the same thing in ConTeXt. The page is just one of many I hope
> >to write on FO and ConTeXt.
> 
> Excuse my ignorance, but what is FO?
> 

Sorry for not explaining that. Once I get an introductory page set up, I
can explain.

FO is short for Formatting Object. It serves the same purpose as
ConTeXt, except in XML. You markup the document in FO, then run it
through a processor, and the output is PDF. 

Normally, one does not actually write the document directly in FO.
Usually one has the document already written in another type of XML,
like docbook or TEI. Then one converts the document to FO.

FO had great promise in that it was a a standard developed by the same
consortium that developed the new standards for HTML. However, the
actual open source software to convert FO to PDF is seriously lacking in
comparison to LaTeX or ConTeXt. For example, the open source application
FOP, written in java, does not let you move tables around on a page. The
version of FOP is .2, and if you consider that a mature piece of
software has a number of 1.0, you can see how far FOP has to come.

One need not know FOP to actually follow my tutorial. Anyone who has to
convert from XML, and knows XSLT, will hopefully find some of the tips
useful. What I am trying to do is strip down ConTeXt to the bare minimum
needed, because with an XSLT conversion, you need less of ConTeXt's
features, such as list numbering.

Paul

-- 

************************
*Paul Tremblay         *
*phthenry@iglou.com    *
************************

Re: FO and ConTeXt: my new wiki page

[Adam Lindsay]

Paul Tremblay said this at Wed, 2 Mar 2005 09:48:49 -0500:

>> Perhaps you could make a family of pages like FO_Layout and FO_Fonts, to
>> make "The FO Way" clearer--these things are informative to people coming
>> from ConTeXt and XSL-FO alike...
>
>I see. So if I am understanding things correctly, you just want me to
>rename my pages? So instead of having Layout, use FO_Layout?

That's just my suggestion. "Page Layout" suggests that the page is more
authoritative than it intends to be. (Yes, nature of the wiki, etc. etc.,
but there was already a page starting on the general Layout problem.)

Best,
adam
-- 
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
 Adam T. Lindsay, Computing Dept.     atl@comp.lancs.ac.uk
 Lancaster University, InfoLab21        +44(0)1524/510.514
 Lancaster, LA1 4WA, UK             Fax:+44(0)1524/510.492
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Re: FO and ConTeXt: my new wiki page

[Mojca Miklavec]

Paul Tremblay wrote:
> I have a new page on the wiki  
> 
> http://contextgarden.net/Page_layout

This has nothing to do with the content of the page, I just got an idea 
when I saw it:

To write a highlighting module, say "<xmlcode>", similar to that one for 
"<texcode>" (I don't how it is made), is probably not so difficult. If 
more stuff in XML is going to appear on the wiki, XML highlighting would 
be great.

Mojca

Re: FO and ConTeXt: my new wiki page

[Patrick Gundlach]

Hello Mojca,

> This has nothing to do with the content of the page, I just got an
> idea when I saw it:

[so we share the same ideas]

> To write a highlighting module, say "<xmlcode>", similar to that one
> for "<texcode>" 

It is already in there. Probably hidden, but have a look at 

http://contextgarden.net/Help:Editing

Patrick
-- 
ConTeXt wiki: http://contextgarden.net