From: "Victor \"Zverok\" Shepelev" <vshepelev@...>
Date: 2007-06-08T16:22:37+09:00
Subject: Project idea: Ruby Press

It seems to be cool idea if somebody with strong experience of printing and
press would code his experience in Ruby, to have pretty DSL for making
"book-like" and "newspaper-like" printing.

I have in mind something like

my_book = book "My Book" do
  page_size 'A4'
  units 'cm'
  type :brochure

  section "Title Page" do
    margin 0
    columns 1

    section "Title" do
      padding :top => 20
      font "Lucida", "36pt"
      align :center
    end

    section "Author" do
      font "Times New Roman", "20pt"
      align :right
    end
  end

  section "Plain Pages" do
    margin [1, 1, 0.5, 0.5]

    font 'Georgia', '12pt'
  
    columns 2, :space => 0.5

    header do
      text_template self.number
      text_align :right
    end
    #hm... lots of other cool stuff?
  end
end

my_book.render_pdf "mybook.pdf" {
  "Title Page" => {
    "Title" => "It's my book!",
    "Author" => "It's me"
  },

  "Plain Pages" => File.read("mybook.txt")
}


It can all look strange (as well as my English)...

The main idea is: 
* DSL, which would be natural for press (headers and footers, columns, and
other things, if you know...)
* Under it, press-print experience coded accurately.
* Special efforts for correct images and tables printing...

What do you think? Am I reinventing TeX?

V.