Discuss: Printing a Book with CSS: Boom!

by Håkon Wium Lie, Bert Bos

31 RE: DOCBOOK

Related to what Jared Hales said, I think it would be interesting if someone were to write the necessary XSL stylesheets to transform DocBook to boom! Last time I checked, the stylesheets for XHTML included in the standard distribution outputted non-semantic XHTML 1.0 Transitional. Outputting to boom! instead would, I think, be a big improvement for those looking to get their DocBook content to web.

posted at 06:36 pm on November 30, 2005 by Jesse Harris

32 CMYK

I am a web guy but I have exported to Quark Express without converting the colours to CMYK to a company who have digital printers. I presume they simply convert it automatically?

posted at 12:03 pm on December 1, 2005 by Johan De Silva

33 CSS vs. XSL

I think it would be better to use an xml file with xhtml markup tags and a xsl fo stylesheet to make the pdf.

I don’t. I challenge you to write the XSL style sheet that generates a similar PDF file from our XHTML source file. It’s certainly possible, but much more troublesome. For more arguments along this line, see Printing XML: Why CSS Is Better than XSL

posted at 05:17 pm on December 1, 2005 by Håkon Wium Lie

34 Disclosure

this is written by a member of the Prince team … a disclaimer would be nice. Or is it there and I read too fast?

There was a disclosure in our original text. Somehow it disappeared in the publication process, but it’s now back in the bio section. Thanks for notifying us.

posted at 05:21 pm on December 1, 2005 by Håkon Wium Lie

35 Docbook vs. Boom!

If writing/marking up a book is your goal, you would be better off using Docbook than reinventing the wheel and writing your own microformat.

Docbook is nice, and you can quite easily adapt the sample CSS style sheet to work with Docbook. The main benefit of using the Boom! microformat is that you can display the document in a billion browsers… and also print it!

posted at 05:25 pm on December 1, 2005 by Håkon Wium Lie

36 CSS vs. big bucks

This is a great idea, one I’ve certainly never thought of using, but I don’t think it’s ready for use on large projects. Companies like Quark and Adobe shell out big bucks to produce programs that do the same thing, why not leave it to them?

Why leave it to them if we can achieve the same using simple web standards? I think XML/HTML + CSS is ready for large projects and the article shows how.

A batch-formatting approach (which both CSS and XSL uses) cannot compete with a human designer in (say) glamour magazines, but most published books can be produced with simple web standards. Our book is relatively advanced compared to (say) a novel.

posted at 05:33 pm on December 1, 2005 by Håkon Wium Lie

37 hypenation

Prince costs $350, works from the command line on Mac and Linux, and doesn’t do auto-hyphenating. I own Lie’s book; a whole lot of manual hyphenating must have gone into it.

Actually, we used a perl script which added soft hyphens () in the right places. Given soft hyphens entities, Prince will do the right thing. It would be nice for Prince to fully automate the process though, I know it’s on the todo list. (That’s one of the great perks of being on the YesLogic board; I get to influence the todo list :-) Email me if you need the script.

posted at 05:42 pm on December 1, 2005 by Håkon Wium Lie

38 Headings

One thing though, what’s with the first sub-heading: “Print vs. paper�?? Aren’t they the same thing? Shouldn’t it be “Print vs. pixel�? or “Screen vs. paper�??

My goodness, yes! Blush. Sloppy authors, I’d say. Fixed. Thanks.

posted at 05:44 pm on December 1, 2005 by Håkon Wium Lie

39 Syntax guide

Very nice, very very nice, I always wondered if it was possible to print in a decent way using XHTML and CSS ;) and I think it’s great! In this tutorial I have seen a large use of unknown-to-me syntax, where can I find a full guide to CSS syntax (apart from w3c specifications?).

Thanks for your kind words. Alas, some of the syntax isn’t even described in W3C specifications yet. The article you were reading explains some of the more advanced extensions, and any book on CSS will tell you the basics. I hope that most of the functionality will be described in W3C Working Drafts in the next 6 months. And some of them are even quite readable.

posted at 05:49 pm on December 1, 2005 by Håkon Wium Lie

40 The caption element

Advocating generic (X)HTML (with classes) over [the caption element] demands more than a casual dismissal. I’d really like to see statements like this clarified (a link would suffice). I’m sure there are good reasons. Share them :)

Ideally, I would like to use the caption element; I believe in HTML semantics. The element is troublesome, however, for two reasons. First, it appears inside the table element while you typically want it to be presented outside of the table. Second, various browsers have tried to add support for the caption element and its attributes. Some have failed , and as a result you enter a minefield when trying to use it. At least, that’s how I felt when I tried. Maybe I didn’t try hard enough. I’d be happy to see you find a way to achieve the same formatting by using the caption element.

posted at 06:01 pm on December 1, 2005 by Håkon Wium Lie