From valerio@publinet.it Mon May 17 12:02:27 1999
Date: Fri, 30 Oct 1998 16:43:22 +0100 (MET)
From: Valerio Aimale <valerio@publinet.it>
To: sdf-users@mincom.com
Subject: Latex driver for SDF 2.0
Hi, everyone!
In the past months I have developed a LaTeX output driver for SDF
2.0; it isn't yet finished, but I would greatly appreciate if some of
you would take the time to beta-test it.
The general idea is to add another level of "metaness" to the SDF
system: ie the LaTeX driver does not output a LaTeX document, but actually a
family of documents.
The driver,in fact, outputs only the body of a document, leaving
to the user the chance to decide the "look and feel" of the final
typeset
The file
--------------------------------
!define DOC_NAME "GalaxyBuilder"
!define DOC_TYPE "Discussion Paper"
!define DOC_AUTHOR "Joe Bloggs"
!build_title
H1: Introduction
After extensive market research, I believe there is
an excellent opportunity for us to develop software
for the I<galaxy construction industry>. Potential
customers include:
* NASA
* European Community
* China
* Japan.
--------------------------
get translated to:
--------------------------
\author{Joe Bloggs}
\title{GalaxyBuilder}
\begin{document}
\maketitle
\chapter{Introduction}
After extensive market research, I believe there is an excellent
opportunity for us to develop software for the {\textit{galaxy
construction industry}}. Potential customers include:
\begin{itemize} % Level 1
\item NASA
\item European Community
\item China
\item Japan.
\end{itemize}
\end{document}
--------------------------
As you can see, the file actually cannot be used with LaTeX, you have
to add the preamble. Now if you want that ugly looking default article
style, you should prepare a wrapper file like this (assuming that the
original file was called test.sdf, and test.tex the LaTeX driver
translated file):
-----------
\documentclass{article}
\input test.tex
-----------
and typeset it with LaTeX 2e (sorry no support for LaTeX 2.09).
Should you prefer a more interesting look, you could prepare a wrapper
like this:
-----------
\documentclass[a4paper,12pt]{article}
\usepackage{times,geometry,titlesec}
\geometry{headheight=1.5in, bottom=.5in, footskip=0in}
\usepackage[american]{babel}
\usepackage{fancyhdr}
\pagestyle{fancy}
\rhead{\textit{Page: \thepage}}
\lhead{A much beautiful document}
\cfoot{}
\newcommand{\secformat}[1]{#1\titleline{\hrulefill}}
\titleformat{\section}[block]{\normalfont\sffamily\slshape\large}{\thesection.}
{0in}{\secformat}
\input test.tex
----------
The output will be dramatically different........
BTW, I think that in the future the SDF language should care only about
markup, leaving to the drivers the management of page layout: but it's only
my $0.02
The LaTeX driver handles Tables (Column dimension decided by the
driver itself, no way to have a fixed width column}; it cannot
currently handle figures.
It is probably full of bugs, use it at your own risk!
It's available in my home page http://svpop.com.dist.unige.it/~valerio/
The drivers consists of the files that you have to copy over the
original one: latex.sdn, sdf.ini and tolatex.pl
When the driver will be enough stable, will become part of the
official SDF distribution.
I would ask anyone who use this driver, to send me bug reports, in
order to speed up its evolution and insertion in the official
distribution.
Bye,
Valreio