From: Dave Thomas <dave@...>
Date: 2004-03-04T12:36:19+09:00
Subject: Re: pickaxe with pics?


On Mar 3, 2004, at 20:59, Its Me wrote:

>
> "Dave Thomas" <dave@pragprog.com> wrote in message
> news:6EEABA19-6CB5-11D8-B411-
>> If the brand new books, the images are in external files and included
>> into the documents. They're .eps's, tiffs, or whatever, but the fact
>> that they're independent of the document makes them easier to work
>> with.
>
> If you don't mind my asking, what else do you'll use in your writing? 
> Write
> in something like XML or YAML? Reference live code from the text? 
> Transform
> into camera-ready or web versions? Use make/rake to track updates?

Books written for the Pragmatic Bookshelf now are written in XML, with 
code inclusion. The XML is converted to PDFs using XSLT to generate 
TeX, and then a set of macros in TeX to generate Postscript/PDF. We 
still haven't found anything that generates nicer typeset output.

The same XMLs can be transformed (again,  using XSLT) to HTML.

The whole process is currently controlled using Make (although I'm 
thinking of looking into rake, although the make stuff is working fine, 
so that's not a priority).

I've also come up with a scheme where each book can subclass our 
standard XML markup, adding their specific elements. Similarly, the 
XSLT and TeX is subclasses per-book, allowing book-specific layout.

The Ruby book uses a slightly different process (for historical 
reasons). It's written in LaTeX (with a boatload of specialized 
markup). It's code is 100% live, so the output you see in the book was 
generated as the book is typeset.


Cheers

Dave