As a follow-up to the last installment regarding creating outlines with nano, I've done some further experimentation with LaTeX and wanted to post here a template I created. The template contains the mark-up that, when appropriately applied, can turn a nano outline into one that prints nicely on a page. After running pdflatex on the created file (which should be given a *.tex extension first), a nice pdf can be output for sending to the printer.
Of course the \outl{#} comments indicate the levels of the outline and how far from the left margin the text gets spaced. The spaces in the template are not, of course needed, but I find them to be a visual aid when looking at this mark-up, so I left them in the template.
The key package I'm using, as may be evident to those of you who've learned a bit about TeX/LaTeX, and the one that allows more than four outline levels, is the cjwoutl package. I also wanted to fiddle with page margins, since the default article class margins seem terribly wasteful of paper. So I set them to be one inch all around.
The final printed product looks pretty nice. Truth be told, I'd like to see greater indentation increments for the outline levels, but I think that might actually be tweakable. I'm not up for attempting that at the moment though, since this looks like it should suit my needs fine.
So, what remains to be done is to find some way to apply that code to the outlines I create in nano. For the time being, I'm content to just edit the files manually, adding mark-up where needed. But there is surely a way to automate that task--a way, unfortunately, shrouded in mystery for uninitiated plebians like myself.
What would need to be done first of all is probably to add at least some special marking to the outline file itself. For example, if each outline level entry were to begin with a unique character unlikely to appear anywhere else in the document as the first character in a new line--say, an equals sign--processing the file could probably be simplified. A program could then be written to look for every new line that begins, either with the equals sign, or with one or more tab spaces followed by an equals sign. Depending on the presence of the equals sign at the beginning of new lines, or after one or more spaces from the newline, the program could be told to replace the equals sign with the \outl{#} mark-up, appropriately incremented.
Then, of course, the preamble and ending would need to be added to the file. Finally, the file would need to be saved with a new extension, namely the .tex extension, so that pdflatex could process it.
For better reference, here are some screenshots of the stages of creating this sort of outline using nano. First, some dummy text entered into a test.outl file open in nano:
In the next phase, the mark-up is added and the file is saved with a new extension (note how the color highlighting changes when the file's extension is modified)(LATER EDIT; you may also note that the prepended and appended lines do not match exactly the mark-up from my template--that because I edited those parts slightly, having found a better way to increase font size for the document):
Finally, pdflatex is run on the file that had the mark-up added and its extension changed appropriately. The pdf produced looks like this:
To give some concrete examples, using regular expressions as they are understood by nano, of the way the nano outline file would have to be processed, the following. Every instance of ^= (new line followed by equals sign) should be replaced by ^\outl{1} (new line followed by first-outline-level mark-up). Next, every instance of ^[[:blank:]]= (new line followed by tab space, followed by equals sign) should be replaced by ^[[:blank:]]\outl{2}. And so on for the various outline levels.
That's how far I've gotten with it to date. Next, I'll be looking for the aid of someone who might be able to give pointers on how the file could be processed as described. I note that Steve Litt's conversion program for making vimoutliner files into something LyX can handle is done using awk. So, perhaps this could be done in the same way. If I discover a way of doing it, I'll post the results in a further addendum to second installment in this series.
NOTE: I made a later edit to the TeX/LaTeX code so that the date, rather than the author's name, appears at the left margin in the header. I also increased the font size for the header title. So the screenshots no longer correspond precisely with the code.
ANOTHER LATER NOTE: here, by the way, is the modified entry from .nanorc that both makes the color highlighting possible, as well as designates the equals sign as a sort of pseudo-bullet (note that levels that do not start with the equals sign do not get color highlighted on this scheme):
Without further ado, the code:
\documentclass[14pt]{extarticle}Now, for a bit of an explanation. I've increased the font size (see the \begin \end{Large} stipulations) due to my deteriorating vision: the standard 10 pt. font used for the document class just is not going to work for me. For the same reason, I needed to increase line spacing (the \linespread stipulation).
\usepackage{cjwoutl}
\usepackage[top=1in,bottom=1in,left=1in,right=1in]{geometry}
\usepackage{underlin}
\setlength{\headsep}{12pt}
\pagestyle{myheadings}
\markright{\today {\hfill ***Header*title*here***\hfill}}
\linespread{1.3} % gives 1.5 line spacing
\pagestyle{underline}
\begin{document}
\begin{outline}[new]
%\outl{1}
% \outl{2}
% \outl{3}
% \outl{4}
% \outl{5}
% \outl{6}
% \outl{7}
% \outl{8}
% \outl{9}
% \outl{10}
\end{outline}
\end{document}
Of course the \outl{#} comments indicate the levels of the outline and how far from the left margin the text gets spaced. The spaces in the template are not, of course needed, but I find them to be a visual aid when looking at this mark-up, so I left them in the template.
The key package I'm using, as may be evident to those of you who've learned a bit about TeX/LaTeX, and the one that allows more than four outline levels, is the cjwoutl package. I also wanted to fiddle with page margins, since the default article class margins seem terribly wasteful of paper. So I set them to be one inch all around.
The final printed product looks pretty nice. Truth be told, I'd like to see greater indentation increments for the outline levels, but I think that might actually be tweakable. I'm not up for attempting that at the moment though, since this looks like it should suit my needs fine.
So, what remains to be done is to find some way to apply that code to the outlines I create in nano. For the time being, I'm content to just edit the files manually, adding mark-up where needed. But there is surely a way to automate that task--a way, unfortunately, shrouded in mystery for uninitiated plebians like myself.
What would need to be done first of all is probably to add at least some special marking to the outline file itself. For example, if each outline level entry were to begin with a unique character unlikely to appear anywhere else in the document as the first character in a new line--say, an equals sign--processing the file could probably be simplified. A program could then be written to look for every new line that begins, either with the equals sign, or with one or more tab spaces followed by an equals sign. Depending on the presence of the equals sign at the beginning of new lines, or after one or more spaces from the newline, the program could be told to replace the equals sign with the \outl{#} mark-up, appropriately incremented.
Then, of course, the preamble and ending would need to be added to the file. Finally, the file would need to be saved with a new extension, namely the .tex extension, so that pdflatex could process it.
For better reference, here are some screenshots of the stages of creating this sort of outline using nano. First, some dummy text entered into a test.outl file open in nano:
In the next phase, the mark-up is added and the file is saved with a new extension (note how the color highlighting changes when the file's extension is modified)(LATER EDIT; you may also note that the prepended and appended lines do not match exactly the mark-up from my template--that because I edited those parts slightly, having found a better way to increase font size for the document):
Finally, pdflatex is run on the file that had the mark-up added and its extension changed appropriately. The pdf produced looks like this:
To give some concrete examples, using regular expressions as they are understood by nano, of the way the nano outline file would have to be processed, the following. Every instance of ^= (new line followed by equals sign) should be replaced by ^\outl{1} (new line followed by first-outline-level mark-up). Next, every instance of ^[[:blank:]]= (new line followed by tab space, followed by equals sign) should be replaced by ^[[:blank:]]\outl{2}. And so on for the various outline levels.
Then, the mark-up
\documentclass[14pt]{extarticle}should be prepended to the beginning of the file, and
\usepackage{cjwoutl}
\usepackage[top=1in,bottom=1in,left=1in,right=1in]{geometry}
\usepackage{underlin}
\setlength{\headsep}{12pt}
\pagestyle{myheadings}
\markright{\today{\hfill ***Header*title*here***\hfill}}
\linespread{1.3} % gives 1.5 line spacing
\pagestyle{underline}
\begin{document}
\begin{outline}[new]
\end{outline}should be appended to the file's end. Finally, the extension of the file to which all the mark-up has been added should be changed to .tex. After this, the file is ready for processing by pdflatex.
\end{document}
That's how far I've gotten with it to date. Next, I'll be looking for the aid of someone who might be able to give pointers on how the file could be processed as described. I note that Steve Litt's conversion program for making vimoutliner files into something LyX can handle is done using awk. So, perhaps this could be done in the same way. If I discover a way of doing it, I'll post the results in a further addendum to second installment in this series.
NOTE: I made a later edit to the TeX/LaTeX code so that the date, rather than the author's name, appears at the left margin in the header. I also increased the font size for the header title. So the screenshots no longer correspond precisely with the code.
ANOTHER LATER NOTE: here, by the way, is the modified entry from .nanorc that both makes the color highlighting possible, as well as designates the equals sign as a sort of pseudo-bullet (note that levels that do not start with the equals sign do not get color highlighted on this scheme):
syntax "outl" "\.outl$"
color brightwhite "(^)=.*$"
color brightred "(^[[:blank:]])=.*$"
color brightgreen "(^[[:blank:]]{2})=.*$"
color magenta "(^[[:blank:]]{3})=.*$"
color brightblue "(^[[:blank:]]{4})=.*$"
color brightyellow "(^[[:blank:]]{5})=.*$"
color cyan "(^[[:blank:]]{6})=.*$"
color brightred "(^[[:blank:]]{7})=.*$"
color brightgreen "(^[[:blank:]]{8})=.*$"
color magenta "(^[[:blank:]]{9})=.*$"
color brightblue "(^[[:blank:]]{10})=.*$"
color brightyellow "(^[[:blank:]]{11})=.*$"
color cyan "(^[[:blank:]]{12})=.*$"
On a side note, do you know Fbida?
ReplyDelete=> http://www.serverwatch.com/tutorials/article.php/3613036/Tip-of-the-trade-fbida-the-Console-Image-Viewer.htm
It is a viewer for the framebuffer which will also display PDFs using 'fbgs'. It was the one tool I needed back when I was having a period without X - I would use LaTeX to create a PDF and this tool to view it. I would use Mplayer compiled for the framebuffer for the movies and Mp3blaster/MOC for the audio. Did you ever look into Markdown and Asciidoc? Lately, I have been looking into Publican - http://hackerpublicradio.org/eps.php?id=0866 for documents. It is an interesting and powerful tool for documents.
Calcurse kept my planning straight.