Re: DOCBOOK-APPS: need help with DocBook customization

[Ian Castle <ian.castle@looksystems.co.uk>]

On Sat, 2001-12-15 at 19:45, Arun K. wrote:
> Goodday gentle folks,
> 
> I got interested in DocBook a couple of months ago because of it's power to
> generate output for multiple formats (pdf, html etc.) from a single source.
> After going through the DocBook Crash Course by David Rugge and Mark
> Galassi and the O'Reilly book (online), I have been able to complete the
> alpha version of a handbook (sgml version) both in PDF and HTML form.

I'll assume that your are using DSSSL style sheets with [open]jade...

> 
> For the final version of the handbook, I want to address the following
> points that were made during the review process.  I need your help because
> I don't where/how to start.  I would sincerely appreciate any pointers on
> how to achieve them.
> 
> 1. 
> Insert the company logo in the bottom of every page along with the page number. 
>   This is akin to a footer in a word processor, which repeats the logo and the 
> page number.

jade only supports the simple-page-sequence, which only allows a single
line in the header/footer. If you try to stick a logo in you run into
problems... text on the main page becomes out of whack - esp. with
things like tables.

> 
> 2. 
> Increase the font size of words/phrases in bold (<command> tag) from 		the 
> preceding and following text.

You need to have a "customisation layer" for your style sheet - I'll
assume you have one set up... This is untested, but

(element command ($my-bold-seq$))

(define ($my-bold-seq$ #!optional (sosofo (process-children)))
  (make sequence
    font-weight: 'bold
    font-size: 24pt
    sosofo))

Obviously, put what font size you like instead of 24pt!...

> 
> 3. 
> Reduce the font size of the section titles by 2 pt. sizes.

There are two ways you could approach this:

- You could copy out the entire defintion of $component-title$ in
print/dbcompon.dsl and paste into your own sty

Then look for where it sets the font size ... currently it is

     font-size: (HSIZE 4)

And change it to some fixed value - anything that counts as a
component-title (chapters etc) would have this size.

Alternatively, HSIZE is a function which multiples your standard text
body by some factor and the parameter supplied. So (HSIZE 4) means that
chapter titles would be the standard size  * the "bump factor" to the
power of 4. The bump factor parameter is %hsize-bump-factor% and
defaults to 1.2, So if the base font size %bf-size% is 10pt, HSIZE 4 is
%bf-size% * ( %hsize-bump-factor% ^ 4 ) or 20.7pt.

So if you set the hsize-bump-factor to 1.17 this would give a component
title size of around 18.7pt - which would be 2 points smaller - but
everything else that made use of HSIZE would have a correspondingly
smaller font size.

(define %hsize-bump-factor% 1.17 )

in your stylesheet.

Try it and see.

> 
> 4. 
> Increase the font size of the regular text by 1 pt. size.

You've not read the stylesheet documentation have you. I was assuming
that you had. Read it now.

> 
> 5. 
> Have Chapter.Section scheme for the section titles.  docbook2pdf in
> 	RH7.2 only gives Chapter number, the sections do not have any 			numbers.
> 

You've Definitely not read the documentation!

You need to have a customisation style sheet (the docbook book explains
this). In this you can put various paramters. These are described in the
documentation that comes with the stylesheets.

> 5. 
> Separate the chapters of the book into 3 parts.  The "Parts" would be
> 	above the chapter in the ToC hierarchy. I took a look at the v3.1 		quick 
> reference in the online DocBook for a special tag to do this 		but did not see 
> anything that might do it (perhaps I missed it).

Mmmm... I wonder what the markup for a "part" could be?

http://www.docbook.org/tdg/en/html/part.html

> 
> 6. 
> The ability to derive a summary of the handbook (chapter and section
> 	titles) in the form of a list (for presentation purposes).

This is the table of contents... You could create a stylesheet that just
produced the TOC...

> 
> I am using the "stock" DocBook RPMs included in RH7.2. My apologies if such
> questions have been addressed before (I went thru the list archives of the
> last couple of months).

Start with the basics first. Read the documentation. Then play around
with a simple customisation layer.

> 
> Thanks very much for your help.
> 
> Best regards,
> Arun Khan
> 

Regards,

Ian.