Hi Thea,
It all comes down to how tolerant you are with starting a new page when you
want to switch from two-column to one-column format. If you're okay with
that, XSL-FO will work fine for you....
At 01:45 PM 8/28/2003, you wrote:
We have a document.
Let's say that it is 5 chapters.
Each of those 5 chapters is broken out into 5 sections.
Either provide each section with its own page-sequence (in which case it
can refer to the appropriate simple-page-master or page-sequence-master),
or group all but the last (e.g. with a select="section[position() <
last()]") into one, and place the last one into its own.
The first 4 sections of each chapter have a 2-column layout; the 5th section
has a 1-column (full-page) layout.
The 5th section *can* be on its own (new) page but it must have a 1-column
layout.
If you wouldn't mind, I would appreciate an explanation of a little more
depth as to how a two page-sequence-master and two page-master format can
help us with the above problem. Multithanks in advance.
It's really pretty simple, although configuring it to work can require the
usual complexities of providing your transformation with logic (like the
above) to reflect your layout requirements. The down side is that FO
provides ways of switching a page-master when a page is odd, even, first,
last or blank, but not based on other criteria. Also, since columns are
assigned to page layout, you can't (practically speaking) have a single
page sequence with both two-column and single-column sections. (A certain
amount of this can sometimes be hacked with tables, but it usually isn't
pretty.)
I hope this helps. (And I'd love to be corrected if I'm wrong.)
Cheers,
Wendell
======================================================================
Wendell Piez
mailto:wapiez(_at_)mulberrytech(_dot_)com
Mulberry Technologies, Inc. http://www.mulberrytech.com
17 West Jefferson Street Direct Phone: 301/315-9635
Suite 207 Phone: 301/315-9631
Rockville, MD 20850 Fax: 301/315-8285
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mulberry Technologies: A Consultancy Specializing in SGML and XML
======================================================================
XSL-List info and archive: http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list