Re: [eLyXer-users] Full headers in page navigation

[Alex Fernandez]

Hi again,

Sorry for the delay, Axel. I was busy adding improvements to eLyXer,
but I gave some thought to your issue. An appropriate answer is
overdue.

On Mon, Jan 17, 2011 at 6:31 AM, Axel Jacobs <address@hidden> wrote:
>> It looks like an interesting problem: how do you deal with long part
>> names? (and I mean "part" as "any kind of part including Part, Book,
>> Chapter..."). A long part name would overflow, causing some ugly
>> adjustments on small screens. We might truncate the part name, but to
>> what length? 20, 30 characters? It might look ugly regardless. A bit
>> of hovering text might work, but it is not too comfortable.
>
> I'm not sure that truncating is a good idea.

After pondering the question, I don't like truncating either. The
navigation header should just stretch down vertically if the title
does not fit in one line.

> Just surveyed some other HTML converters. The links below point to example
> documents that show how next/up/prev is handled. I did not investigate if
> this can be customised.
>
> - tth (http://hutchinson.belmont.ma.us/tth/manual/sec5.html#tth_sEc5.2)
>  top: head, previous
>  bottom: head, next

Ugly.

> - latex2html
>  (http://www.latex2html.org/node1.html#SECTION00011000000000000000)
>  top: Next, Up, Prev (as icons)
>       Next: full name, Up: full name, Prev: full name

Still ugly but functional, even if the buttons are reversed.

> - hevea (http://para.inria.fr/~maranget/hevea/doc/manual041.html#toc123)
>  top: Up, Next (as icons)
>  bottom: Up, Next (as icons)

Ugly too, and hard to use.

> - tex4ht (http://www.tug.org/applications/tex4ht/mn3.html)
>  top: exit full section heading

Useless.

> As you know, none of the packages produce output that is even remotely as
> nice as that from Elyxer. The navigation header from latex2html is about as
> close as it get, but
> a) Whay is the order Next, Up, Prev and not the other way around?

The order is certainly bothersome. I think that eLyXer has better
navigation here.

> b) the section names are not numbered and very short, so it's hard to tell
> what happens when they are longer.

I would guess nothing happens: the output is just longer.

> Well, this didn't get us very far, did it?

On the contrary, it is a very nice survey of the state of the art.

Anyway, this is an obvious necessity and it should not be too hard to
add to eLyXer, so I have added it to the wish list. It will not be in
the next version 1.2.0, but I will try to include it for 1.2.1.

Thanks,

Alex.