[cl-typesetting-devel] multi-page documents

[Peter Seibel]

Klaus Weidner <kw at w-m-p.com> writes:

> On Fri, Dec 19, 2003 at 07:13:38PM -0500, David J Cooper Jr wrote:
> >  I am thinking about how to tackle multi-page documents with
> >  cl-typesetting but am a bit stuck as to how to get started.
> > 
> >  Each page needs to end up inside a
> > 
> >    (pdf:with-page ... )
> > 
> >  right?
> > 
> >  So if we have a piece of content (made with
> >  typeset::compile-text), we need an intermediate step which
> >  figures out how to break that content into multiple pages, right?
> 
> Just accumulate the content using compile-text, and then let the
> engine split it into pages for you.
> 
> Try something like this:
>
> (defun draw-page (content)
>   (let ((x 72)
> 	(y 720)
> 	(dx 468)
> 	(dy 648))
>     (pdf:with-page ()
> 		   (pdf:with-saved-state
> 		    (pdf:translate x y)
> 		    (let ((box (make-filled-vbox content dx dy)))
> 		      (when box
> 			(stroke box 0 0)))))))
> 
> ;; ...
> 
>   (let ((content
> 	 (compile-text 
> 	  ()
> 	  (paragraph 
> 	   "cl-typesetting" :eol
> 	   (vspace 2)
> 	   (with-style (:font "Times-Italic" :font-size 13)
> 		       "The cool Common Lisp typesetting system"))
> 	  ;; ...
> 	  )))
> 
>     (pdf:with-document ()
> 		       (while (boxes content)
> 			 (draw-page content))))
> 		       (pdf:write-document file)))
> 

So I tried to use this code a while back, filling in the ... as best I
could and didn't have much success at all. Before I go back to banging
my head against it, does anyone have an example of extremely simple
multi-page layout--I'm thinking of something along the lines of, I
have a string containing more text than will fit on a page; what's the
simplest way to get it turned into a multi-page PDF. No fancy
formatting required (or even desired at this point), just text broken
up into pages.

-Peter

P.S. Marc, I know you'd rather code than write docs but a set of
graduated cl-typesetting examples sort of like the ones in cl-pdf
would be a useful starting point for folks like me who like to learn
by grabbing something that works and try tweaking it in various ways.
The current cl-typesetting example, though an impressive demo, has a
bit much going on to be used in that way.

-- 
Peter Seibel                                      peter at javamonkey.com

         Lisp is the red pill. -- John Fraser, comp.lang.lisp