On Sun, Jan 12, 2025 at 07:53:20AM +0200, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> without seeing examples. So how about showing one or more examples of
> formatting @titlepage block with the current commands, and what would
> it look like under this/these proposal(s)?
The example in the Texinfo manual:
@titlepage
@title Sample Title
@c The following two commands start the copyright page.
@page
@vskip 0pt plus 1filll
@insertcopying
@end titlepage
Would become
@documentinfo
@title Sample Title
@end documentinfo
@publicationinfoextra
@vskip 0pt plus 1filll
@insertcopying
@end publicationinfoextra
A more complexe @titlepage, like
@titlepage
@title NAME-OF-MANUAL-WHEN-PRINTED
@subtitle SUBTITLE-IF-ANY
@subtitle SECOND-SUBTITLE
@author AUTHOR
@author other author
@page
...
@end titlepage
could be
@documentinfo
@subtitle SUBTITLE-IF-ANY
@subtitle SECOND-SUBTITLE
@title NAME-OF-MANUAL-WHEN-PRINTED
@author AUTHOR
@author other author
@end end documentinfo
@publicationinfoextra
...
@end publicationinfoextra
An explicit formatting of the @titlepage like
@titlepage
@sp 10
@center @titlefont{NAME-OF-MANUAL-WHEN-PRINTED}
@sp 2
@center SUBTITLE-IF-ANY
@sp 2
@center AUTHOR
...
@end titlepage
would become
@documentinfo
@title NAME-OF-MANUAL-WHEN-PRINTED
@subtitle SUBTITLE-IF-ANY
@author AUTHOR
@end documentinfo
@iftex
@cover
@sp 10
@center @titlefont{NAME-OF-MANUAL-WHEN-PRINTED}
@sp 2
@center SUBTITLE-IF-ANY
@sp 2
@center AUTHOR
@end cover
@end iftex
> In addition, I think it is very important that you look at non-trivial
> title pages in existing manuals and see how to accommodate with the
> new commands what they are trying to do with the existing ones.
The @cover block is supposed to accomodate presentation of cover as was
done in @titlepage previously for TeX.
> And finally, can you describe the rationale for these changes in the
> language? What are the problems with the current title-page
> constructs and commands that require an overhaul of this kind?
There are two issues with the current design. A minor one is that the
cover and the beginning of the document are both in @titlepage, it is
better to separate. The really important design deficiency is that it
is not possible to separate giving semantic information on the document
and formatting the cover in TeX. In non-TeX formats, we use the @title
command in @titlepage as a semantic information on the document, while
in TeX, it is directly used for the formatting.
This has some consequences
* it is not possible to specify more information without having it
used for TeX (and LaTeX) formatting
* it is not possible to format explicitely other formats than TeX
With the proposed change, there could be some document beginning like:
@documentinfo
@title The title
@date date
@coverimage mypic.png
@metadata some key, metadata value
@author Author 1
@author Author 2
@end documentinfo
And the different converters would pick the relevant information in
@documentinfo to do a cover adapted to the output format.
But it would also be possible to provide a cover for different formats,
and it could be made even simpler with new @insertXXX commands similar
to @copying/@insertcopying, like
@iftex
@cover
@inserttitle
@insertsubtitles
@center From a publisher
@vfill
@tex
\sometexcommand
@end tex
@insertauthors
@end cover
@iftex
@ifset epub5
@cover
@insertcoverimage
@end cover
@end ifset
--
Pat
