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Re: CVS docs PDF patch
- From: Jonathan Larmour <jifl at eCosCentric dot com>
- To: Bart Veer <bartv at eCosCentric dot com>
- Cc: iztok dot zupet at vsr dot si, ecos-patches at sources dot redhat dot com
- Date: Tue, 05 Nov 2002 02:17:18 +0000
- Subject: Re: CVS docs PDF patch
- References: <200210282253.03191.iztok.zupet@vsr.si> <200210300052.36901.iztok.zupet@vsr.si> <20021031213002.C11A3616CB@delenn.bartv.net> <200211010011.19865.iztok.zupet@vsr.si> <20021101225711.4BCE0616CB@delenn.bartv.net>
Bart Veer wrote:
Although it might seem more natural for the printed format to be PS
rather than PDF, I believe that the PS files will be significantly
larger than the equivalent PDF's. Not a good idea for an FTP site.
Definitely. Compressing the .ps would help of course, but personally I
don't really see a problem with sticking with PDF.
Iztok> Indeed there are two printable GhostScript targets, but I
Iztok> suggest they should produce a slightly different output:
Iztok> PS should be in the standard printed DocBook format with
Iztok> (define %two-side% #t) and (define %refentry-new-page% #t),
Iztok> while the PDF should be a little simplified with
Iztok> (define %two-side% #f) and (define %refentry-new-page% #f),
Iztok> thus making it more suitable for net publishing.
I think I would prefer refentry-new-page to be #t for all formats.
That does increase the number of pages a bit, but refentry's are
essentially man pages and are nearly always kept on separate pages
irrespective of the format.
I'd agree.
IIRC, A4 is 210mm by 297mm and US letter is 8.5in by 11.0in,
equivalent to 216mm by 279mm. So US letter is slightly wider, hence
less likely to give hbox overflows, but only slightly. Maybe that is
a valid reason for preferring US letter.
On the other hand, things preformatted as US letter will be far too long
for most A4 printers, but A4 things tend not to mind being printed on US
letter as quite often it's still within the printer's "hard" margins. So
A4 is more usable by both.
Of course since you can specify the exact size you want anyway, perhaps we
should just choose 210mm by 279mm :-).
Just a warning to Iztok though: I doubt this will solve all the hbox
problems. Many of them are simply because the lines are in some Docbook
markup which indicates it's so verbatim the renderer can't introduce a
line break even though it's reached the right margin. I kept having to fix
problems like this before, and many unresolved ones still exist. The only
alternative is to change the tag or manually adjust the line. Shrinking
everything will ultimately work, but perhaps only once the font is teeny
tiny :-).
Perhaps you should take this discussion to ecos-discuss. It is
possible that somebody there has more experience with this sort of
thing.
Probably a good idea.
Oh and to put my oar in, I think PDFs should primarily be suitable for
hard printing, and don't really see any need to differentiate between PDFs
for printing and for browsing. While I sympathise with Iztok's reliability
problems, I think that is unfortunately just his printer driver and not a
general issue.
Jifl
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