Re: [docbook-apps] Some problems with rendering db -> PDF

[Bob Stayton <bobs at sco dot com>]

On Sun, Aug 31, 2003 at 04:13:19PM +0200, Marc Baaden wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I am currently finishing a scientific report that I have written
> in docbook+refdb. There are some points that I could not yet
> work out, so any help is appreciated:
> 
> Infos: docbook 4, refdb, xsltproc+XEP toolchain
>        xml written in iso-8851, french language

Is that iso-8859-1?
 
> 1) In the titles (chapter/section) of the resulting PDF, the hyphenation
>    character does not appear. Eg the "-" is missing, whereas the words
>    are correctly separated

I wasn't able to duplicate this problem, even with
lang="fr".  Long titles are hyphenated in my XEP output.
I wasn't testing with French text, though.  What versions
of the stylesheets and XEP and you using?  Are you using
a customization layer?  A modified titlepage.templates.xml?

> 
> 2) Same thing for greek characters in the title (eg beta). They are
>    missing. In the actual paragraphs these are correctly reproduced.
>    So 1) and 2) seem title-specific.

This could be a similar issue, except I get different
results.  With the 1.61.3 stylesheets, I don't get
greek letters in either location.  In the new release
1.62.0, the font-family property includes a font
list "serif,Symbol,ZapfDingbats" instead of just "serif".
That enables XEP to search the other fonts for
characters it needs.  It finds the greek characters
in the new version.

> 3) Font problem: although visually with xpdf and acrobat the PDFs
>    are ok, printing yields weird characters and lots of spaces.
>    Transforming with pdftops and printing the ps works fine.
>    Maybe an XEp configuration problem ??

Are you using any special fonts?
 
> 4) I use superscript for things like La3+. The outcome is currently
>    very ugly. The fontsize of the 3+ is too big and it is also
>    positioned quite high. This makes appear large white spaces between
>    the lines before and containing the superscript.
>    Any tips for improving this ?
>    (I think of eg scientific articles, where the same linespacing is
>    maintained even with super/subscripts)

The template for superscript does not reduce the
font size.  You will need to add a customized
template that could respond to a role attribute
on some superscripts (or change all superscripts
if that is safe for your documents).  Something like this:

<xsl:template match="superscript[@role='sci']">
  <fo:inline baseline-shift="super" font-size="75%">
    <xsl:apply-templates/>
  </fo:inline>
</xsl:template>

> 5) Euro symbol : how to include the euro symbol in a docbook document ?
>    is there an entity for it, or should one just (assuming I'd write
>    in utf-8) paste it in unicode ?

The &euro; entity is defined in the DocBook 4.2 DTD.

> 6) Less urgent, what is the recommended way for checking spelling
>    (note: I am writing a French document, so I need a french dictionary).
>    Is this typically something that should be left for the editor
>    (Emacs in my case) or are there other recommended ways ?

I use aspell with the --mode=sgml option.
Very efficient. 
 
-- 

Bob Stayton                                 400 Encinal Street
Publications Architect                      Santa Cruz, CA  95060
Technical Publications                      voice: (831) 427-7796
The SCO Group                               fax:   (831) 429-1887
                                            email: bobs@sco.com

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