H1: 2.001
!subsections "Enhancements,Fixes,Incompatibilities"
H2: Enhancements
The enhancements are:
!block sections
. Level 0 headings
. New command line options
. Table enhancements
. HTMLDOC support
. Improved LaTeX support
. HTML formatting enhancements
. HTML meta information and stylesheet support
. Stylesheet-friendly HTML generation
. Embedded documentation enhancements
. Miscellaneous stuff
!endblock
H3: Level 0 headings
H0, A0 and P0 are now supported as paragraph styles. Level 0 headings
are implicitly converted to:
> !define DOC_NAME "text of heading"
> !build_title
This feature makes it easier to structure large documents as topics
each of which begins with H1. To format a particular topic as a
document, {{CMD:sdf}}'s -H option can be used to set the initial
heading level to zero like this:
> sdf -2html -H0 mytopic.sdf
H3: New command line options
The {{CMD:sdf}} program has some new command line options: -O, -g and -K.
The -O option specifies an explicit output directory.
If the -O option is specified without a parameter, the input file's
directory is used. For example, to convert F<mydir1/mydir2/myfile> to
HTML and put the output in the same directory as the original file,
the command is:
> sdf -2html -O mydir1/mydir2/myfile
Note: The -O option doesn't always work.
In particular, HTML topics generation doesn't support it yet.
The -g option prefilters the input files by executing {{CMD:sdfget}}
using the default report (default.sdg). To change the report used,
specify the report name as the parameter.
If the report name doesn't include an extension, sdg is assumed.
The -K option sets the look of headings.
Sensible parameter values are H, A and P.
For example, to get the embedded documentation out of a script, make the
headings plain, generate a document (rather than a topic) and convert it
to HTML, the command line is:
> sdf -g -KP -H0 -2html myscript
H3: Table enhancements
The predefined table style names (columns, rows, grid, plain and shade)
now have edit-case aliases (i.e. Columns, Rows, Grid, Plain and Shade).
If the edit-case versions are used, quotes are not needed, e.g.
> !block table; style=Plain
> !endblock
The {{keepindents}} parameter has been introduced for the {{FILT:table}}
filter. If set, leading whitespace in cells is kept, e.g.
!block verbatim
!block table; keepindents
Directory Description
sdf top level directory
bin scripts
bat batch file wrappers around scripts
perllib
sdf sdf libraries
Pod pod libraries
!endblock
!endblock
The output is:
!block table; keepindents
Directory Description
sdf top level directory
bin scripts
bat batch file wrappers around scripts
perllib
sdf sdf libraries
Pod pod libraries
!endblock
H3: HTMLDOC support
To convert a document to HTML ready for Michael Sweet's {{PRD:HTMLDOC}} program,
the command is:
> sdf -2html -DHTMLDOC ...
Alternatively, {{CMD:sdf}} can call HTMLDOC itself in order to
generate PostScript or PDF. The commands to do this are:
> sdf -2ps_html ...
> sdf -2pdf_html ...
!block note
To maintain backwards compatibility, FrameMaker is still the default
back-end for generating PostScript and PDF. If you wish to make HTMLDOC the
default back-end, edit the {{FormatMappings}} sections of the F<sdf.ini>
file and change {{ps}} to mean {{ps_html}} and {{pdf}} to mean {{pdf_html}}.
Once this is done, the following commands will use HTMLDOC rather
than FrameMaker:
> sdf -2ps ...
> sdf -2pdf ...
!endblock
When {{CMD:sdf}} invokes HTMLDOC, it sets the appropriate HTMLDOC options
by using the following SDF variables: DOC_TITLE (build from DOC_NAME and
DOC_TYPE), DOC_TOC, DOC_TWO_SIDES, OPT_PAGE_SIZE, OPT_MARGIN_INNER,
OPT_MARGIN_OUTER, OPT_MARGIN_TOP and OPT_MARGIN_BOTTOM. In addition,
a new variable called HTMLDOC_OPTS can be used to pass additional
options through to the HTMLDOC command line, e.g.
> sdf -2pdf_html "-DHTMLDOC_OPTS:--gray --jpeg" ...
To do: add support for AUTHOR, COPYRIGHT and DOCNUMBER.
At the moment, SDF headers and footers are not converted to their HTMLDOC
equivalents. To access HTMLDOC's header/footer support, it's currently
necessary to use the HTMLDOC_OPTS variable.
H3: Improved LaTeX support
Valerio Aimale's ({{EMAIL: mailto:valerio@publinet.it}}) LaTeX driver is
now part of the standard distribution. Refer to the file
F<doc/notes/latex.notes> for usage details.
H3: HTML formatting enhancements
The following phrase attributes are now supported when generating HTML:
color, family, size, bold, italic, underline, bgcolor and changed.
A changed phrase or paragraph is shown with the background color given
by the HTML_CHANGED_COLOR variable. The default value is {{teal}}.
The following paragraph attributes are now supported when generating HTML:
align, first, left, right.
See the SDF files within the F<examples/2001/stylesheets> directory for
examples of using these attributes.
H3: HTML meta information and stylesheet support
The {{meta}} filter can now be used to add META tags to the HEAD of
a HTML document. This filter expects a table with columns called Name
and Content, e.g.
!block verbatim
!block meta
Name|Content
description|Tools for building Java systems
keywords|Java,development tools
!endblock
!endblock
Stylesheets can be linked or embedded using the {{links}} and
{{stylesheet}} filters respectively. Here's a linked stylesheet:
> !block links
> Jump
> test.css
> !endblock
Here's how to embed the same stylesheet:
> !include "test.css"; stylesheet
Phrases and paragraphs now support the following attributes:
* {{class}} - give this phrase or paragraph the nominated HTML CLASS attribute
* {{style}} - format this phrase or paragraph using the nominated style
information.
Here's an example of applying a custom style:
> [style='background-color: blue;; color: red']
> A styled paragraph.
Note: SDF uses a single semi-colon to separate attributes, so attributes
values with embedded semi-colons need to use ';;' to mean ';'. (The
general rule is to use N+1 consecutive semi-colons to get N semi-colons).
H3: Stylesheet-friendly HTML generation
Generated HTML documents are now "stylesheet-friendly" in that:
* DIVs are placed around interesting parts of the document
* parts of the title are implicitly given classes
* tables are implicitly given classes.
Here are the document sections placed in DIVs:
!block table
Document_part DIV_name
title section title
table of contents contents
main body main
header section header
footer section footer
navigate section navigate
!endblock
The navigate DIV is nested within header and footer.
(This makes it easy to format the navigation section regardless
of its location.)
Here's the list of classes placed on parts of the title:
!block table
Class Comments
doc-title title of document
doc-id id of document
doc-author author list
doc-status document status
doc-modified modification date
!endblock
Tables are implicitly given a class named after the SDF table style.
Heading and footing rows within tables are given classes of {{heading}}
and {{footing}} respectively.
Here's a set of Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) rules for a colorful
table:
> TABLE.columns {background-color: yellow}
> TABLE.columns TR.heading {background-color: aqua}
> TABLE.columns STRONG {font-size: 20pt}
> TABLE.columns TD {color: purple}
See the SDF files within the F<examples/2001/stylesheets> directory for
more examples of using these features.
H3: Embedded documentation enhancements
A new filter called {{FILT:get}} has been added.
Support for embedded documentation in IDL has been improved (the IDL now
gets pretty-printed in the "Interface" section).
The {{MAC:getdoc}} and {{MAC:getcode}} macros now guess the get-rule
using the formatting extension.
The {{CMD:sdfget}} program has been enhanced in several ways:
* if specified without a parameter, the get-rule is now guessed from
the file extension (see the {{CMD:sdfget}} documentation for details
on how this is done)
* the new -v option enables verbose mode (which shows the get-rule guessed)
* a new option (-f) can be used to specify the
the filename to use for formatting (which is useful when the text
is coming from standard input)
* a new get-rule called {{bat}} is supported for DOS batch files
* if a report filename doesn't have an extension, sdg is assumed.
The {{default.sdg}} report has been enhanced to support new sections
called {{Notes}}, {{See_also}} and {{Authors}}.
A new SDG report called {{all.sdg}} has been added. This report
formats all embedded documentation sections (unlike {{default.sdg}}
which only extracts selected sections).
The {{default.sdg}} and {{all.sdg}} reports have been enhanced to
support the SDG_BEGIN and SDG_END macros. These macros are empty
by default so authors can override these to customise the
display of extracted documentation.
H3: Miscellaneous stuff
A new module called {{homepage}} has been added to make it easier to
build SDF-like home pages. For an example of usage, see the source for
SDF's home page (F<doc/home.sdf>).
A Russian locale (ru_ru) has been added thanks to
Alexey L. Popov ({{EMAIL:alpopov@elkamail.ru}}).
New macros called {{div}} and {{enddiv}} can be used to put divisions
in documents.
If {{CMD:sdf}}'s -p option is specified without a parameter, {{FILT:table}}
prefiltering is assumed.
H2: Fixes
Indented tables now work as expected, i.e. leading whitespace at the
beginning of the heading row is now accepted and remaining rows have
that amount of whitespace trimmed.
When generating txt output, leading cell whitespace now works as expected.
Previously, multiple spaces were converted to a single space.
Attribute values containing ;; no longer have the whitespace around
the character sequence trimmed.
Internally, unhandled internal directives no longer produce a warning.
(As a result, it's now easier to extend things without "breaking"
existing drivers.)
When generating HTML, the HTML_PRE_SECTION is no longer prepended unless
a table of contents is generated.
H2: Incompatibilities
When HTML is generated, the default footer no longer contains a line.
To get the old behaviour, set the HTML_OLD_FOOTERS variable, e.g.
> sdf -2html -DHTML_OLD_FOOTERS ...
The HTML driver no longer uses special embedded comments to work out
where to put the table of contents.
The {{MAC:getcli}} macro no longer searches the include path: it just
executes the command.