Suggestions for making Lout more flexible

[James Ramsey]

I've noticed one nagging thing about Lout. For all
Lout's flexibility, the placement and formatting of
its table of contents is utterly and terribly rigid. I
have very little choice in where the Table of Contents
falls in a document, and a relatively short list of
possible customizations that I can make to its format.
I suggest the following: 

1) Have things like @ContentsGoesHere to go within
@FrontMatter and @End @FrontMatter, or between
@BackMatter and @End @BackMatter stuff.

Here's my idea of what a @FrontMatter section might
look like:

@FrontMatter
        @SeparatePageNumbering{yes}
@Begin
@Contents
        @Title{Table of Contents}
        @SeparatePageNumbering{yes}
@Begin
        @ContentsGoesHere
        @NP
@End @Contents
        
@Preface
        @Begin
My preface . . .

@End @Preface

@FrontMatterSection
        @Title{Copyright of the following figures}
        @FrontMatterSectionHeadingFormat{Bold-Title}
@End @FrontMatterSection

@Contents
        @Title{Figures used in this lovely(?) book}
        @ContentsHeadingFormat{
        @Scale @IncludeGraphic{silly_parrot.eps}
        @DP title
        }
@Begin
        @ListOfFiguresGoesHere

@PP Some dumb stuff to say about these figures.
@End @Contents

@End @FrontMatter

You probably noticed that @Contents @Begin/ @End
@Contents was a generic container of contents
material, while @ContentsGoesHere actually indicates
the placement of the contents. This allows, in my
opinion, for more flexibility. I could conceivably do
the following:

@Contents
        @Begin
@ContentsGoesHere
@End @Contents

@Contents
        @Begin
@ListOfFiguresGoesHere
@End @Contents

@Contents
        @Begin
@ListOfTablesGoesHere
@NP
@End @Contents

Here, the table of contents, list of figures, and list
of tables, are all listed without a page break in
between them, but with a page break at the end, where
@NP is.

You probably also noticed the @FrontMatterSection.
That's just a way to account for things in the front
matter that don't fit neatly within a preface, table
of contents, or what not. I would expect a
@FrontMatterSection to probably be unnumbered.
Further, I think that the formatting for the headings
of each @Contents, @FrontMatterSection, etc. should be
individually settable, since there's no guarantee that
the parts of the front matter will have a need for the
kind of uniformity that section headings have.

Finally, there's the @SeparatePageNumbering option.
The idea of this is that the sections with
@SeparatePageNumbering can be separately numbered from
the rest of the document, and with a different page
number format.

The syntax for @BackMatter would be the same as for
@FrontMatter, only in addition, there would be a

@References @Begin . . . @End @References

that could house an @EndNotesGoesHere or a
@ReferencesGoesHere the same way @Contents @Begin
/@End @Contents would house @ContentsGoesHere and its
cousins. 

I would further suggest that for each chapter,
section, subsection, etc., that there be a separate
contents leader and format, rather that the simple
separation of major and minor entries. I think that
this would be more flexible.

Of course, it's easy for me to write all these grand
proposals. Unfortunately, I haven't the foggiest idea
of how to carry it out. Besides, I'm sure these ideas
could use some tweaking and fine-tuning and in some
cases, a more full fleshing out. I hope though that
this can spur thought and encourage some much-needed
improvements in flexibility to Lout.







=====


----I am a fool for Christ. Mostly I am a fool.----

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