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Conference vaxuum::online_bookbuilding

Title:Online Bookbuilding
Notice:This conference is write-locked: see note 1.3.
Moderator:VAXUUM::UTT
Created:Fri Aug 12 1988
Last Modified:Mon Jul 15 1991
Last Successful Update:Fri Jun 06 1997
Number of topics:440
Total number of notes:2134

37.0. "Comments on footnotes and formal figures" by CRAYON::GENT (There is no poetry without madness -- Democritus) Wed Dec 07 1988 09:20

    Hi,
    
    One of our writers tested his book with the ONLINE doctype recently.
    He had several comments that might seemed appropriate for this forum.
    (Note: we are using VMS V5.1-T2 and DECwindows FT2.1.)
    
        
     o  First, a stylistic issue: footnote numbers are unusually large. 
	When they appear in the middle of a paragraph they tend to crowd 
	the lines above them.

     o  The ONLINE doctype inserted extra blank lines into one of the 
        formal figures. (The figure is coded with <FIGURE> and 
	<CODE_EXAMPLE>.)  I can't tell for sure, but the blank lines
	may be the result of some interaction between ONLINE and
	the <FIGURE_ATTRIBUTES>(MULTIPAGE) and <VALID_BREAK> tags.
	I will add the source code for the offending figure in a reply 
	to this note.
    
     o	The same figure illustrates another problem which is more of
    	an annoyance than a bug. When the user asks to see a formal
	figure, the bookreader creates a window based on the size of
    	the figure. Unlike the text window, the figure window does not
    	have a horizontal scroll bar. (This is probably because the
	bookreader knows it has created the window to match the figure 
	size.) However, if the figure has a long title (as in the 
	previous example), the title does *not* fit in the window and 
	the only way to see the full title is to expand the window. 
	The annoyance is that there is no indicator (such as a scroll bar) 
	to tell the user that he or she is not seeing the full title.
    
	As a wishlist item for a future version,  the bookreader may
	want to consider the size of both the figure and its title when
	selecting a window size, or use a horizontal scroll bar.

    Thanks,
    
    --Andrew
T.RTitleUserPersonal
Name		DateLines
37.1Here is the figure: blank lines follow "STEP4F"CRAYON::GENTThere is no poetry without madness -- DemocritusWed Dec 07 1988 09:2790
<figure>(Installation Tape Format for VIDA/CICS for DB2\installation_tape_format)
<figure_attributes>(multipage)
<code_example>
File 1         SMPMCS
<valid_break>

File 2         JCLIN
<valid_break>

File 3         OBJECT MODULES

                 maincics
                 $s     
                 core
                 comm
                 db2
                 msgmgnt
                 csrmgnt
                 metr
                 metq
                 @msgs
                 vidailog
                 acsr

<valid_break>
File 4         DBRMs

                 dbrmdb2 
                 dbrmmetq
                 dbrmacsr
<valid_break>

File 5         SOURCE MODULES

                 metqjob

<valid_break>
File 6         SAMPLE INSTALLATION JOB STEPS

                 STEP2C
                 STEP2D
                 STEP2E
                 STEP2F
                 STEP2G
                 STEP2H
                 STEP2I
                 STEP3A
                 STEP3B
                 STEP3C
                 STEP3D
                 STEP3E
                 STEP3F
                 STEP3G
                 STEP4A
                 STEP4B
                 STEP4C
                 STEP4D       
                 STEP4E
                 STEP4F
                 STEP4G
                 PRTJRNL

<valid_break>
File 7           vida.colleges  

<valid_break>
File 8           vida.degrees   

<valid_break>
File 9           vida.depts     

<valid_break>
File 10          vida.employee  

<valid_break>
File 11          vida.jobs       

<valid_break>
File 12          vida.jobhist   

<valid_break>
File 13          vida.salhist   

<valid_break>
File 14          vida.workstat

<valid_break>
File 15          program directory
<endcode_example>
<endfigure>
37.2CLOSET::UTTThu Dec 15 1988 13:5418
    Andrew-
    
    1. Stylistic issue: I made these large and bold because they are
    'hot' and because we currently have no way of flagging, for the
    user, what is hot on the screen and what is not. So, big and bold
    seemed most useful for flagging the hotspot and giving the user
    a better target to aim at. This could be modified and I will look
    into this in the future.
    
    2. This is a new one. I have the source code you supplied and will
    take a look at it.
    
    3. Titles: for V1.0 of the Bookreader we cannot pass formatted text for
    the title bars -- the converter extracts the title as an ASCII string
    (unformatted) and passes that on to the Bookreader. This is a known
    problem that we will address in a future version of the Bookreader.
    
    Mary
37.3titles do not scrollSTAR::KRAETSCHNeXt Window PleaseThu Dec 15 1988 17:209
Mary is correct--perhaps the best way to fix the long titles is to format them.
We are looking at ways to handle this better.  Note that even if we gave you
the scrollbars, the title is a fixed field in the window and does not scroll,
so the only way to see the rest of the title is to resize the window.

Another problem with long titles is that the icons created in the icon box
use the topic title as a label, so long titles create LONG icons.

joe
37.4VAXUUM::UTTTue Dec 20 1988 16:3513
    RE: example in note 37.1.
    
    I extracted this file and processed it for the Bookreader but was
    unable to reproduce the problem. The output was fine, no extraneous
    blank lines. <valid_break> should not be (and has not been) generating
    blanks lines, so I am at a loss. If you continue to note the problem,
    please let me know.
    
    The bookbuilding tools on VAXUUM are updated from the Nov-11 baselevel.
    I can't think of any bug fix or change that would affect this
    file, although that's a possibility (i.e., we've fixed it).
    
    Mary