On Wednesday, September 10, 2014 10:38:03 PM UTC-4, Robin Powell wrote:
On Wed, Sep 10, 2014 at 05:58:41PM -0700, Robin Lee Powell wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 10, 2014 at 04:31:08PM -0700, Robin Lee Powell wrote:
> > On Wed, Sep 10, 2014 at 03:35:39PM -0700, TR NS wrote:
> > >
> > > It is. But recently I found a solution I like even better,
> > > mainly because it is a more direct solution. It's called
> > > WeasyPrint and it is an HTML to PDF converter. Because it is
> > > HTML based, it is much easier to manipulate custom markup. This
> > > can be doen via coded transforms if need be, but much of it can
> > > be done via CSS which is really nice. And since Markdown
> > > passes-thru custom markup, it can be used as the source markup.
> > >
> > > However it remains to be seen to what degree the printed output
> > > will be suitable. My preliminary tests looked good, but as
> > > always the devil is in the details.
> > >
> > > http://weasyprint.org/
> >
> > I would *love* if such a thing worked, but the big thing I'm not
> > seeing in the examples is page-numbered cross-references, i.e.
> > "the armadillo (see page 22) is a blue fish".
> >
> > Can you test to see if you can generate such things, and if so
> > show me a pdf example?
>
> So, yeah, no. See https://github.com/Kozea/WeasyPrint/issues/218
>
> The way to do this is http://www.princexml.com/purchase/ , which I
> had previously rejected because ridiculously expensive.
>
> Having said that, though, the LLG certainly *can* afford the $500
> for a single user license, so that's certainly an option. Feel free
> to play with the free version and see what's what.
Hmm... So far it looks like Prince may actually be quite workable
for us. Links I'm using to help with the CSS:
http://alistapart.com/article/building-books-with-css3
http://alistapart.com/article/boom
--
And it's standards-based, on the CSS Paged Media Module. So in time open source tools will eventually catch-up. That's a big plus because it means it's not a proprietary lock-in. Having said that, it's still $500 and it still remains to be seen if it is fully up to the task. I will give the free version a whirl and see how it goes.
On the other hand, I have worked with the git repo enough now to think that perhaps an approach that combines (enhanced) markdown as a source format with your Ruby transforms would be a good stop-gap solution (at least until these HTML/CSS print solutions mature). The markdown can take care of basic styling needs in a format that is much easier to work with, while the xhtml it produces along with pass-thru xml can be handled via the Ruby code.