[pmwiki-users] PublishPDF version 2.0.7 released

[John Rankin]

On Wednesday, 31 May 2006 3:06 PM, Stirling Westrup <sti at pooq.com> wrote:
>John Rankin wrote:
>> On Wednesday, 31 May 2006 8:56 AM, Stirling Westrup <sti at pooq.com> wrote:
>>> I am wondering if there are any plans to support multi-column .pdf pages
>>> in the future. I currently have a large number of .pdf files that are
>>> formatted in two columns like these two samples:
>>>
>>>  http://sti.pooq.com/archive/temp/sample1.pdf
>>>  http://sti.pooq.com/archive/temp/sample2.pdf
>>>
>>> and I would dearly love to move the source over to pmwiki and use
>>> PublishPDF to generate the .pdf files on demand.
>>>
>>>
>> There is already some support for 2 column output.
>> 
>> For publishing single pages as a two column pdf, add
>> 
>> (:2column:)
>> 
>> to the page. See 
>>
>http://www.wikipublisher.org/wiki/index.php?n=Wikipublisher.PublishingDirectives
>
>Thank you! This looks to mostly be what I want. The only worry I now
>have is that it seems to affect entire pages. My banner headings for new
>chapters/sections would need to span the page. I could easily turn each
>section into its own wiki page, if that would make my conversion easier.
>(I presume a single (:2column:) on a wiki page will affect all .pdf
>pages generated from that wiki page.)
>
Currently, it works as follows...

When you put a (:2column:) directive on a page, the main title
and subtitle span the columns while body copy, including any
headings, is in-column. The entire content of the page is set
in 2 columns. There is no (:1column:) directive to revert to
single column output on a 2 column page.

The template that controls print options could be modified to
make the 2 column setting optional. The reason we didn't do so
is that 2 column output only works well for certain kinds of
pages, so it could cause problems if it's a universal option.

In your case, I suspect you will want to set up a trail page
showing the pages that make up the chapters and sections, with
a (:typeset:) directive to publish the collection. In principle,
this means you would write

    (:typeset 2column=on:)

and the engine would automagically set chapter headings across 
columns and body copy in column.

Currently, this capability is not provided, but could
(I think) be added. I have no feeling for how much effort
would be involved, but will read up on it. It would be a
useful capability to offer, certainly.
-- 
JR
--
John Rankin