On 14 Feb 2018, at 23:14, Paul Libbrecht <paul(a)hoplahup.net> wrote: Hello Vincent, having some experience with TeX I would implement CSS with macro-definitions… Every element start would be a call to a macro that would check for rules that would apply to its element, including passing parameters of their ancestry.

However, I guess that your solution seems probably more ad hoc and more practical. Is there any reason that you don’t use the XSL-FO renderer that use LaTeX? I thought there were several of them.

paul On 14 Feb 2018, at 21:01, Vincent Massol wrote: > Hi devs, > > I’m currently working on improving our TeX renderer (which is really a POC ATM), in an effort to see if it could be used to generate nice PDF exports (you generate LaTeX and then you convert to PDF). > > The main issue is that LaTeX doesn’t have any technology for applying style to it (like CSS has for HTML). In addition I wasn’t able to find any good HTML+CSS to TeX converter (as we have for PDFs with XSLT+FOP). > > So right now my idea is to implement some default behavior in the Tex Renderer (that could be configured globally in xwiki.properties and/or in the Admin UI) and give the ability to override specifically in the content. > > For example, imagine that you need to decide how to position table column content (left, centered, right) or whether the rows and/or columns of your table have vertical and horizontal lines (or other configs, autowrap, etc). > > The idea is that the Tex Renderer would support some custom tex-specific parameters. For example: > > (% tex-table-spec=“c | c | c" tex-table-floating="true" tex-table-caption="caption" %) > |=A|=B > (% tex-table-row-ending="\hline" %)|a|b > > (by default the table spec would be left aligned with vertical lines, and rows would be separated by horizontal lines). > > If you have some comments or ideas, please let me know. > > Inventing a CSS-like mechanism would just be too hard to implement IMO. > > Thanks > -Vincent > > PS: If you want to see table options in LaTeX, see https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Tables

On 15 Feb 2018, at 08:24, Paul Libbrecht <paul(a)hoplahup.net> wrote: Hello Vincent, On 15 Feb 2018, at 7:25, Vincent Massol wrote: Definitely. The complete TeX is based on macros. Basic macros are created using the \def macro. See e.g. http://www.tex.ac.uk/FAQ-whatmacros.html Closer to the HTML world, there are the LaTeX environments. They are nestable and extensible: see http://www.tex.ac.uk/FAQ-whatenv.html This would be the way to create styles I think. Paths are not transported, as far as I know (would they be called maybe environment stack?). That would need to be carried as an extra parameter produced by the renderer. I would also think that recognising complex rules with such as classes would need an amount of coding before the LaTeX is processed.

The world is thinner than I thought. The closest I could find are the TEI renderers: http://www.tei-c.org/release/doc/tei-xsl/ https://www.tug.org/TUGboat/tb27-0/rahtz.pdf

or DocBookLaTeX https://sourceforge.net/projects/dblatex/

paul >> >> On 14 Feb 2018, at 21:01, Vincent Massol wrote: >> >>> Hi devs, >>> >>> I’m currently working on improving our TeX renderer (which is really a POC ATM), in an effort to see if it could be used to generate nice PDF exports (you generate LaTeX and then you convert to PDF). >>> >>> The main issue is that LaTeX doesn’t have any technology for applying style to it (like CSS has for HTML). In addition I wasn’t able to find any good HTML+CSS to TeX converter (as we have for PDFs with XSLT+FOP). >>> >>> So right now my idea is to implement some default behavior in the Tex Renderer (that could be configured globally in xwiki.properties and/or in the Admin UI) and give the ability to override specifically in the content. >>> >>> For example, imagine that you need to decide how to position table column content (left, centered, right) or whether the rows and/or columns of your table have vertical and horizontal lines (or other configs, autowrap, etc). >>> >>> The idea is that the Tex Renderer would support some custom tex-specific parameters. For example: >>> >>> (% tex-table-spec=“c | c | c" tex-table-floating="true" tex-table-caption="caption" %) >>> |=A|=B >>> (% tex-table-row-ending="\hline" %)|a|b >>> >>> (by default the table spec would be left aligned with vertical lines, and rows would be separated by horizontal lines). >>> >>> If you have some comments or ideas, please let me know. >>> >>> Inventing a CSS-like mechanism would just be too hard to implement IMO. >>> >>> Thanks >>> -Vincent >>> >>> PS: If you want to see table options in LaTeX, see https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Tables

On 15 Feb 2018, at 07:25, Vincent Massol <vincent(a)massol.net> wrote: Hi Paul, Could you give an example of what you mean by macro-definitions? Is this something that exist in TeX? Do you have a pointer? As I said in my original mail I tried to search for an XHTML to LaTeX converter/XSLT but couldn’t. If you know of one, I’ll gladly have a look. Thanks a lot! -Vincent

Ok I’ve now realized that the 2 approaches mentioned so far are not going to work: * The first one mixes content and styling and is complex for the user to use * The second one is actually very limited and doesn’t allow full control of the LaTeX markup used So I’ve been thinking about a new approach that would both separate the content from the styling and at the same time allow full control of the produced LaTeX for perfect typesetting. The idea is: * Don’t provide a Listener for LaTeX in XWiki and instead only provide a BlockRenderer (i.e. no streaming generation of content). That’s the limitation. * For each XWiki Block object, provide a default LaTeX template that is called to generate the LaTeX content. * Allow Velocity in the LaTeX template and provide velocity tools + bind the passed Block to the $block variable. * For example for TableBlock: ---- start here ---- ## Compute the number of columns #set ($firstRowBlock = $blocks.getChildren().get(0)) #set ($columnSize = $firstRowBlock.getChildren().size()) #set ($tableSpec = "${stringtool.repeat("l|", $columnSize - 1)}l" \begin{tabular}{${tableSpec}} ## For all rows #foreach ($rowBlock in $blocks.getChildren()) ## for all cells #foreach ($cellBlock in $rowBlock.getChildren()) #processTemplates($cellBlock.getChildren()) & ## TODO: if last cell then output ""\\" #end ## TODO: if last row then don't output \hline \hline #end \end{tabular} ---- end here ----- * Users will be able to override the default templates for each Block * If the user wants to use a special template for a specific Block, define it using a “tex-template” parameter. For example: (% tex-template=‘customTemplateForThisTable’ %) |=A|=B |a|b * A template can set any variable in the VelocityContext so that templates downstream can access them. There are still details to iron out ofc. WDYT? Thanks -Vincent > On 14 Feb 2018, at 21:01, Vincent Massol <vincent(a)massol.net> wrote: > > Hi devs, > > I’m currently working on improving our TeX renderer (which is really a POC ATM), in an effort to see if it could be used to generate nice PDF exports (you generate LaTeX and then you convert to PDF). > > The main issue is that LaTeX doesn’t have any technology for applying style to it (like CSS has for HTML). In addition I wasn’t able to find any good HTML+CSS to TeX converter (as we have for PDFs with XSLT+FOP). > > So right now my idea is to implement some default behavior in the Tex Renderer (that could be configured globally in xwiki.properties and/or in the Admin UI) and give the ability to override specifically in the content. > > For example, imagine that you need to decide how to position table column content (left, centered, right) or whether the rows and/or columns of your table have vertical and horizontal lines (or other configs, autowrap, etc). > > The idea is that the Tex Renderer would support some custom tex-specific parameters. For example: > > (% tex-table-spec=“c | c | c" tex-table-floating="true" tex-table-caption="caption" %) > |=A|=B > (% tex-table-row-ending="\hline" %)|a|b > > (by default the table spec would be left aligned with vertical lines, and rows would be separated by horizontal lines). > > If you have some comments or ideas, please let me know. > > Inventing a CSS-like mechanism would just be too hard to implement IMO. > > Thanks > -Vincent > > PS: If you want to see table options in LaTeX, see https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Tables >