From valerio@publinet.it Mon May 17 12:02:27 1999
Date: Fri, 30 Oct 1998 16:43:22 +0100 (MET)
From: Valerio Aimale <valerio@publinet.it>
To: sdf-users@mincom.com
Subject: Latex driver for SDF 2.0


Hi, everyone!

In the past months I have developed a LaTeX  output driver for SDF
2.0; it isn't yet finished, but I would greatly appreciate if some of
you would take the time to beta-test it.

The general idea is to add another level of "metaness" to the SDF
system: ie the LaTeX driver does not output a LaTeX document, but actually a 
family of documents.

The driver,in fact, outputs only the body of a document, leaving 
to the user the chance to decide the "look and feel" of the final
typeset 

The file

--------------------------------
!define DOC_NAME           "GalaxyBuilder"
!define DOC_TYPE           "Discussion Paper"
!define DOC_AUTHOR         "Joe Bloggs"
!build_title
 
H1: Introduction

After extensive market research, I believe there is
an excellent opportunity for us to develop software
for the I<galaxy construction industry>. Potential
customers include:

* NASA
* European Community
* China
* Japan.
--------------------------

get translated to:

--------------------------
\author{Joe Bloggs}
\title{GalaxyBuilder}


\begin{document}

\maketitle

\chapter{Introduction}


After extensive market research, I believe there is an excellent
opportunity for us to develop software for the {\textit{galaxy
construction industry}}. Potential customers include:

\begin{itemize} % Level 1
\item NASA

\item European Community

\item China

\item Japan.


\end{itemize}


\end{document}
--------------------------

As you can see, the file actually cannot be used with LaTeX, you have
to add the preamble. Now if you want that ugly looking default article 
style, you should prepare a wrapper file like this (assuming that the
original file was called test.sdf, and test.tex the LaTeX driver
translated file):

-----------
\documentclass{article}

\input test.tex
-----------

and typeset it with LaTeX 2e (sorry no support for LaTeX 2.09).

Should you prefer a more interesting look, you could prepare a wrapper 
like this:

-----------
\documentclass[a4paper,12pt]{article}
\usepackage{times,geometry,titlesec}
\geometry{headheight=1.5in, bottom=.5in, footskip=0in}
\usepackage[american]{babel}
\usepackage{fancyhdr}
\pagestyle{fancy}
\rhead{\textit{Page: \thepage}}
\lhead{A much beautiful document}
\cfoot{}
\newcommand{\secformat}[1]{#1\titleline{\hrulefill}}
\titleformat{\section}[block]{\normalfont\sffamily\slshape\large}{\thesection.}
{0in}{\secformat}
\input test.tex
----------

The output will be dramatically different........

BTW, I think that in the future the SDF language should care only about
markup, leaving to the drivers the management of page layout: but it's only 
my $0.02

The LaTeX driver handles Tables (Column dimension decided by the
driver itself, no way to have a fixed width column}; it cannot
currently handle figures.

It is probably full of bugs, use it at your own risk!

It's available in my home page http://svpop.com.dist.unige.it/~valerio/

The drivers consists of the files that you have to copy over the
original one: latex.sdn, sdf.ini  and tolatex.pl

When the driver will be enough stable, will become part of the
official SDF distribution.

I would ask anyone who use this driver, to send me bug reports, in
order to speed up its evolution and insertion in the official
distribution.

Bye,

Valreio