Re: [lojban] Re: The CLL project, technical directions

[james riley <jimr1603@gmail.com>]

LaTeX has hyperlinks these days so we could make a PDF that isn't just
pages from a book.

On 29 December 2013 13:08, v4hn <me@v4hn.de> wrote:
> On Sat, Dec 28, 2013 at 04:01:16PM -0800, Robin Lee Powell wrote:
>> > Given that major web-browsers nowadays open pdf just like any html
>> > file through additional plugins and hyperlinks can be used in pdfs
>> > as well, what exactly are the reasons for generating HTML in the
>> > first place?
>>
>> PDF viewers are, almost without exception, steaming piles of crap?
>
> So are browsers.
>
>> Mostly it's just that a book-format PDF has completely different
>> user needs from a web page.  It's broken up by physical pages, which
>> is unnatural for the web, it doesn't wrap to fit the browser, etc.
>>
>> It's certainly a possible fallback, but it's pretty weak IMO.
>
> IMO that's nitpicking in this context. Yes, there are differences
> between HTML and PDF. But the CLL is ba'e the official document
> for lojban and I do not see why it has to be available in different
> formats to begin with.
>
> With multiple output formats you will always end up with situations like
> "hm, I could need some additional space in the pdf here" or "Argh, I hit a
> special case using this environment and now it looks awkward in this format".
> As far as I can see this is quite a problem at the moment.
> If you then introduce lots of this-format-only tags into your sources,
> you're basically back to your two-fork mess imo.
>
>> > The main problem you're trying to solve the whole time is
>> > generating HTML and PDF from one source. Granted, that's
>> > non-trivial, though possible.
>>
>> Quite.  The question is, how would I need to be doing it to get your help?
>
> docbook and xslt is a pretty confusing mess imho.
> If the CLL really uses only few features of this combination,
> it would really help quite a bit to have the whole conversion process
> in one ``simple'' module written for this specific translation task exactly.
> However, we might again end up with something very confusing.
>
>
> v4hn

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