Re: Changes to pp2latex

On 31 Jan 2003 Robert Inder wrote:

  > I've been using perlpoint for a while now, to generate fairly complex
  > suites of HTML pages, and also documents that I can both print via
  > LaTeX and distribute via the web.
  >
  > There were a few places where I could not get it to do what
  > I wanted, so I've hit it with a hammer until I have something
  > that does what I want.

You are encouraged to do so ;-)

  > In the process, I came to the conclusion that someone has missed a
  > trick at the fairly low level design stage, ....

Yes, that's me.  When I started writing pp2latex I was not an expert in
LaTeX and I fear that is still true.

  > I see two specific problems.
  > ...
  > I think the correct behaviour is that if users do not specify a prolog
  > file of their own, pp2latex should use a standard prolog taken from
  > a file that is distributed with it.  This will make it easier for users to
  > create their own prolog by customising the standard one.

Perfectly right!  I had the intention to change that and will do in the
next release.

  > Second: in "handleHeadline" there is a cascaded "elsif" which
  > converts section depth into the corresponding "latex" section name:
  > 0 => chapter, 1 => section and so forth.  ...
  > ....
  > The right thing to do is to give pp2latex
  > an extra option which tells it whether to have "chapters", or just
  > start with "section".  The same option should then be used
  > to choose one of TWO default prologs (one based on report, one on
  > article).

Yes, I agree.

  > So, rather than just dump a changed version of the tool on the table
  > and say "take it or leave it", I have also described
  > my intention.

Your suggestions are highly appreciated :-)

  > First off, I didn't like was the way URLs were being formatted ...

Yes, hard coded formatting should be avoided.

  > ... So I modified pp2latex so that instead
  > of it trying to decide how the URL should look, it simply puts it, and the
  > text of the anchor (body of the \L) as arguments to a latex command "\PPurl".
  >
  > I did the same trick for references to named labels.  pp2latex was
  > planting a LaTeX "ref" tag.  I changed this to plant a call to
  > a command that I defined, which in turn displayed the reference in the
  > way I like (e.g. "Page 12").  But again, anyone who doesn't like it...

This is a good idea. The combination of PerlPoint tags and LaTeX commands
(which can be adopted in the prolog) provide a high level of flexibility.

  > Then I realised that other cross-references were not working properly.
  > I wanted to adopt a similar strategy, based on writing simple but
  > configurable wrappers around LaTeX's own reference mechanism.
  >
  > So first, I modified handleHeadLine to explicitly put a LaTeX label ....

Thank you very much for your work and the posting via [email protected].
I will try to integrate your fixes into the next release.

Best regards,

  Lorenz

--