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Markku Sakkinen | 6 Sep 2005 09:49
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Some suggestions

Hello all,

I have used Lout already for over 5 years, but somehow neglected the
mailing list until now.  I have just moved from version 3.29 to the
brand new 3.31, without noticing any problems in the upgrade.  However,
I'll present some small problems and suggestions.

1. Some setup files in the "include" subdirectory are missing version
information and have incorrect dates.  For instance, the beginning of
the "book" file says
#   Jeffrey H. Kingston
#   17 September 1999
although it has been enhanced probably in every subsequent Lout version.

2. There are now the new options  <at> IndexRangeFormat and  <at> IndexARangeFormat
at least in the "book" file (commented out like other options).  I guess
it was intended to have also  <at> IndexBRangeFormat.

3. The symbol  <at> RawIndex produces an index entry without a page number,
and is intended to be used together with  <at> SubIndex entries.  However,
a rather common way to use index entries is the following:
  phonograph, see gramophone
  (gramophone, see phonograph) :-) (according to the classic Finnish
      humorist author, pseudonym Olli)
Such usage could sometimes be desired also for subindex entries,
thus a symbol  <at> RawSubIndex would be nice to have.

4. I have used a setup file slightly modified from "book", where the
appearance of the introductory pages has been changed from the defaults.
For some reasons, such changes always seem to produce an extra page before
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Jeff Kingston | 6 Sep 2005 22:08
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Re: Some suggestions

Thanks for these.  I'll put them in the pot for the next
release, which is some way off.  If you're absolutely
stuck for something, let me know.

Jeff
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Markku Sakkinen | 13 Sep 2005 13:58
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Re: Some suggestions

I wrote a week ago:

> 4. I have used a setup file slightly modified from "book", where the
> appearance of the introductory pages has been changed from the defaults.
> For some reasons, such changes always seem to produce an extra page before
> the title page, although I have not defined  <at> BeforeTitlePage.  Lout also
> always give an error message like this:
>      5,1: unresolved cross reference  <at> Roman&&0
> Of course, the extra page can be removed afterward from the PostScript file.
> However, it is not possible to start the numbering of Intro pages with 1
> from the page following the title page, because  <at> IntroFirstPageNumber
> cannot be set to -1.

Now I found out the reason: my modified setup file was based on a very old
version of "book", and so didn't work well together with the current versions
of other setup files.  I merged my own settings into the new "book", and got
rid of the mysterious extra page.

If I set to  <at> IntroFirstPageNumber 0, so that the first page after the title
page is numbered 1, the error message persists but is harmless.
This leads me to a new suggestion: at least in a book, the title page should
not be counted as an Intro page.  The header and footer options for "intro
start" pages are hardly appropriate for it.

Markku
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Gmane