Re: Concrete definition/macro problem, connected with Re: Lout syntax etc.

[Valeriy E. Ushakov]

On Mon, Jul 20, 1998 at 11:55:32AM +0400, Wolfram Kahl wrote:

> From: Wolfram Kahl <address@hidden>
> To: address@hidden
> CC: address@hidden
> X-Diagnostic: Not on the accept list

I think people might be puzzled with Jeff's orphan reply to your
mesage, as your message was rejected since you're subscribed from a
different address.  Drop me a note with your new stable address and
I'll change it in the dist list.


> I shall negotiate the exact layout with Springer (where I already
> tried to push Lout for LNCS and met cautious welcome

!

Springer is a big name and LN* is a respectale series.  If Springer
adopts Lout as an option for LN* - it would be a boost.  If I can be
of any help in coding the layout - don't hesitate to contact me.


> one point in that direction is that they also want PDF with links
> ... and I ALWAYS need diagrams!

This is why I have been lobbying for direct pdfmark support in the
PostScript backend.

Vincent has done a great job with the PDF backend, but PDF has
inherent limitations that makes @Diag nearly impossible to port to
this backend.  @Diag is a piece of a heavy binary Lout/PostScript
wizardry that relies on PostScript for doing quite a lot of work (by
juggling dictionaries to keep track of labels and other advanced
techniques).

Thus PDF backend has links but misses @Diag &co.  PostScript backend
has @Diag &co but misses links.

Fortunately, `pdfmark' allows to have the best of two worlds in the
PostScript backend, providing you have a distiller that will convert
@Diag assembly into PDF images.

`pdfmark' services can be wrapped in a set of builtin abstractions
that will emit `pdfmark' for PostScript backend and will translate
into appropriate PDF constructs for the PDF backend.

One example might be:

    builtin @NamedDestination left @Tag right @Object
    builtin @HyperLink left @Destination right @Object

and, say in @LargeScaleStructure

    tag @NamedDestination {
        headingfont @Font
        headingbreak @Break { @LongNum headingformat title }
    }

and then we can use smth like

    see { some.section } @HyperLink { section @NumberOf some.section }.


Since pdfmark needs page coordinates for several attributes, it's
impossible to (ab)use @Graphics (that puts you in the gsave/grestore
sandbox) to sprinkle `pdfmark' in the PostScript output.

PDF backend already have this functionality implemented - it should be
relatively painless, I guess, to share this code with PostScript
backend and add a set of builtins to export this functionality in the
uniform manner into the Lout world.  Then one can produce PostScript
and distill it into PDF thus obtaining both complex diagrams &co and
links &co.  More over, since GSview (Ghostscript previewer for
windows) understands pdfmark directly in PostScript - even the
PostScript output from Lout will have hyperlinks.  It seems that GV
(Unix previewer) does not support pdfmark though [but hey, when Lout
will emit it, you can ask GV maintainer to add the pdfmark support].

Thank you.

SY, Uwe
-- 
address@hidden                         |       Zu Grunde kommen
http://www.ptc.spbu.ru/~uwe/            |       Ist zu Grunde gehen