Hi Steve, On Thu, Jun 24, 2010 at 4:02 AM, Steve Litt <sl...@troubleshooters.com> wrote: > I just downloaded 0.99, ran it against my book "Twenty Eight Tales of > Troubleshooting", and had it build me an HTML file. Frankly, I expected it to > crash and burn on a file that size, but instead for the most part eLyXer > worked perfectly. Rather than elaborate on the thousands of things eLyXer did > right, I'll list a few of the things that were less than perfect:
As you must know well, document preparation is a tedious and time-consuming job. eLyXer is supposed to make it easy but still it does not come close to the amazing customizability of LyX, since the latter comes with the full power of TeX. I wish it was easier to make HTML output as flexible as TeX (or even PDF), but it is just not possible, so some compromises must be done. Suggestions for improvement are always welcome, but sometimes they are very hard to do well. One common example is two column layouts -- it just does not translate well to HTML. > MINOR AGGRAVATIONS: > > * Parts, Chapters and Sections weren't distinct enough in their font or look. > Probably I could fix that by changing your included CSS file or making one > just for this book. Note that the default lyx.css does only define the size for regular text, and the rest is standard HTML as rendered by your browser: Chapter is <h1>, Section is <h2>, and Part is centered <h1>. Font sizes can as you say be manipulated at will with a custom CSS. > * Graphics are the right size in the book for screen reading, but are too > small in the HTML file. I imagine I could either do some config on eLyXer or > run a postprocessor to correctly size the graphics. Graphic sizes are a big concern, since translation from "individual document page" size to "continuous HTML page" needs an approximation. eLyXer chooses to believe that "col%", "height%", "width%" and "text%" can all be approximated to HTML's "% of page width"; while absolute sizes in cm or mm, and % of original image size (for images with an absolute size), are respected. As we will see later, if you convert your images manually to PNG eLyXer will usually respect them. > MEDIUM CONCERNS > > * As everyone knows, I fine-tune the heck out of my front matter. ElYxer > dropped the first 2.5 pages of my book, starting in the middle of page 3. > Nothing that can't be worked around, but... This one can be harder. Perhaps you could send me a loremipsumized version of your book in private? Then we will see what we can do. > GENUINE WORRIES > > * eLyXer wrote .png copies of my book's graphics in my existing images > directory. With this particular book that's no big deal because my book used > .gif images. But what if my book had used .png images -- would they have been > overwritten with (presumably smaller) .png copies, thereby changing the > appearance of the book? I'd suggest that if the book has images in the images > directory, you copy them into the images_elyxer directory. If it has images in > the mypictures directory, you copy them into the mypictures_elyxer directory. > If they're in the current directory (ugly way to do things, but just saying), > copy them into a new directory hard code named elyxer_images. I know probably > eLyXer has code to prevent overwriting, but the user who wants to use eLyXer > naively would appreciate the new directories being used for eLyXer generated > graphics. As you guessed, eLyXer will respect your images if they are in PNG format. If the images are in a subdirectory of the current directory the paths will be respected in the conversion (e.g. dir/subdir/image.gif will end up as dir/subdir/image.png), but if they are in a different directory they will be placed in the new images directory (e.g. ../anotherdir/image.gif will end up as images/anotherdir/image.gif). This should make it easier to locate your converted images. This behavior can be finetuned using the --directory and --destdirectory parameters, which should work in unsurprising ways (although they are surprisingly easy to get wrong). However, all this logic will only work if you convert your images from the command line. Done from within LyX, images will always end up in the newly created pagename.html.LyXconv directory. > Good work Alex -- it converted wonderfully. Thanks! A lot of people besides myself have worked a lot to improve eLyXer. (In fact I had forgotten to include you in the acknowledgements despite previous suggestions and testing, solved now with your permission.) Alex.
