[publican-list] Dbfo keep-together instructions stripped out by publican?

[Norman Dunbar]

Hi Jeff,


On 29/01/12 23:29, Jeff Fearn wrote:
> Hi Norm, have you rebuilt Publican from the SVN repo? We have done a lot
> of work tweaking the CSS file used to create PDFs with wkhtmltopdf.
Well, I hadn't built it from source, but I've just spent the afternoon 
doing just that. I'm not a Perl user at all, so it was "fun".

I now know about cpan and after much wailing and gnashing of teeth, I 
managed to get a "Build" executable created and from there, Publican 2.9 
installed.

The initial ./Build test failed to create the pdf files, but 
re-installing wkhtmltopdf resolved those issues. >/Build install (as 
root) worked fine and I now have 2.9 running.

You have indeed been doing a huge amount of work on the CSS as the 
finished pdfs now look much better. But unfortunately, still fraught 
with problems for my situation anyway:

<screen> is formatted on as few lines as possible. I have a 5 line 
<screen> that renders onto one line and another 40 line one that renders 
as a huge mono-block of text. :-(

Tables have no borders between rows etc. I like the fancy bi-coloured 
rows though, unfortunately I need the fully-bordered version. I assume 
the CSS could be tweaked in css/overrides.css to fix this. (Note to 
self, have to learn CSS now!)

<programlisting> is no longer rendered in a mono-spaced font. The nice 
background and borders have also gone. Again, I assume tweaking the CSS 
will help restore the old ways.

Images are no longer centred/centered where specified.

Graphical admonitions seem to have lost all their quality. The title-bar 
is rendered in a two tone colour rather than a single one. The Note 
image, for example, is very fuzzy indeed.

Tables split over pages again - even when I've specified that they 
shouldn't. There are no headings for the continued tables as there was 
before.

Indices - well, my book has 4 of them. Three are specialised indices and 
the fourth is the main (default) index. Every one of the four renders 
exactly the same. It appears that the index type is being ignored. This 
could be in the initial conversion to HTML and I will check, just in case.

I'm a bit suspicious of this as the Publican User Guide renders 
perfectly in pdf.

Unfortunately, the problem with a lack of page numbers in the pdf 
indices is still there. HTML uses section headings PDF uses page 
numbers, except now both use section headings.

The cover page image is now present and correct.

Paging is better now. There are page breaks at the top of each Part, 
Section and Chapter, as desired.

It's looking a whole lot better now, but unfortunately, there's still a 
lot of work required. Wish I could help a bit more. :-(

Appreciate all the work being done with Publican though - thanks a huge 
amount!


Cheers,
Norm.


>
> svn co http://svn.fedorahosted.org/svn/publican/branches/publican-2x
>
> These changes, and hopefully a few more, will be in Publican 2.9, due
> out ... hopefully soon O_O
>
> Cheers, Jeff.
>
> On 01/27/2012 07:20 PM, Norman Dunbar wrote:
>> Morning Jared,
>>
>> Ok, I tried wkhtmltopdf after installing the QT stuff needed by the two
>> rpms you linked me to.
>>
>> Good points:
>>
>> It's very fast indeed!
>>
>> The output format appears quite nice, as you say, fantastic looking
>> documents.
>>
>>
>> Bad points (for me anyway):
>>
>> The front cover image is missing and I have a lovely set of scroll bars
>> where it should be. :-(
>>
>> Paging is ruined - nothing throws to a new page any more - sections,
>> chapters, parts etc, all start just below where the last "bit" finished.
>>
>> Every part, chapter and section has a table of contents present, only
>> the book itself should have one.
>>
>> Every single table now splits over a page, but even worse, using FOP I
>> did get a copy of the table headers on the continuation. Not any more.
>> :-(
>>
>> I presume the above is due to the initial conversion from XML to HTML
>> being an html-single - there are no page breaks - so tables etc don't
>> split in the html, but when converted to pdf, oh boy!
>>
>> But the worst thing of all for a printed document, the indexing. I have
>> 4 (yes, overkill perhaps, but that's how it is!) different indices and
>> instead of having page numbers, they have the section header instead.
>>
>> I'm afraid it's not for me - yet - as it's not producing anything like a
>> decent, printable pdf document. Sorry.
>>
>>
>> Appreciate you taking the time to remind me of this utility, but it's
>> not quite ready for mainstream yet - at least, as far as my book is
>> concerned.
>>
>> Thanks.
>>
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Norm.
>>
>
>


-- 
Norman Dunbar
Dunbar IT Consultants Ltd

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