Re: [docbook-apps] Line Breaks to BR in HTML Output

["Bob Stayton" <bobs@sagehill.net>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Russell Seymour" <russell.seymour@turtlesystems.co.uk>
To: "Bob Stayton" <bobs@sagehill.net>; <docbook-apps@lists.oasis-open.org>;
"Dave Pawson" <dpawson@nildram.co.uk>
Sent: Wednesday, March 10, 2004 3:34 AM
Subject: Re: [docbook-apps] Line Breaks to BR in HTML Output


> Bob,
>
> I have found that the literallayout works when I produce and FO and then a
> PDF, but not when converting to HTML.  However for the HTML I am using
> Dave's FAQ anwaer which seems to be working OK.

Could you send me a sample document with a literallayout that doesn't work
in HTML?

> The thing that is now puzzling me is that I thought a newline character
> would be honored in the FO output, but I find it is not.

Not sure why you thought that.  Unless otherwise instructed to do so, XSL-FO
does line filling when it composes text in a block, and treats a newline in
the input as just a white-space character. A newline is preserved only when
certain FO properties are set in a block, such as
linefeed-treatment="preserve".

> Using literallayout here is not statisfactory as the text I am importing
from the
> database is bing put into a table and this tag means the text overruns the
> confines of the table cell.
>
> What I need it to do is honor the newline characters that are there but
also
> wrap the text if it needs to at the boundaries of the cell, but I am not
> having much luck with this.  I did think that maybe using the same XSL for
> the HTML markup would work, but then I realised that this is just for HTML
> output and not FO.

What you want is a customization like the one I posted about a month ago.
It puts every input line into its own fo:block.  That preserves the newlines
in the input since each block begins a new line in the output.  But a long
line can wrap inside its block, without joining any other lines.

http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/docbook-apps/200402/msg00128.html

> On another note you may have seen my last post yesterday which was to do
> with printing a seperate title page.  I have re-read your documentation on
> your very informative site but have not made a progress.  Are there any
> examples or hints you can point me in the direction of to get this to
work.

If you understand the basic concept of editing the titlepage spec file and
generating a new xsl file from it, then I can offer a hint on getting the
page break for the article title page.  Take a look at the title page specs
for book, which has a separate title page.  It includes these two templates
that make those page breaks:

 <t:titlepage-separator>
      <fo:block break-after="page"/>
  </t:titlepage-separator>

  <t:titlepage-before t:side="verso">
      <fo:block break-after="page"/>
  </t:titlepage-before>


> I apologsie for all the questions, I am still getting my head around the
> DocBook standard.

You aren't the only one.  8^)

Bob Stayton
Sagehill Enterprises
DocBook Consulting
bobs@sagehill.net