The macro package supports four document types: article, report, book and the
manual page. Note that document types have nothing in common with output
formats; a book can be converted to each of the output formats, and a manual
page can be converted to a .dvi
file. Nevertheless, some formats are more
useful for some document types. A book that is converted to the man
output
format to be later processed with groff
won't look too good; a better
conversion to ASCII would be via the ms
output format.
Each document must be started by specifying the document type.
The relevant macros are:
article(title)(author)(date)
: The article
document type is
meant for short documents. The macro arguments specify the title of the
document, the author and the date.
In articles, the title page is numbered and the table of contents is on
the title page. The sectioning commands sect
, subsect
etc.
are available.
report(title)(author)(date)
: The report
document type differs
from an article
in that it has a separate unnumbered title page, a
table of contents on its own page, and the sectioning command
chapter
. A report
is meant for larger documents.
book(title)(author)(date)
: The book
type is for still larger
documents. It supports the sectioning command part
.
manpage(title)(section)(date)(source)(manual)
: The manpage
document type is specifically meant to write manual pages, as found on
Unix systems. It uses its own sectioning commands to reflect the necessary
sections in a manual page. This document format is described separately
in ??.
plainhtml(title)
: This document type is typically used in HTML
output. It's implemented for situations where you only need to create a
HTML file, but want to use the Yodl package to help you with handy macros.
Except for the fact that no author
and date
arguments are
necessary, this document type is similar to article
. (In fact, you can
emulate plainhtml
by using an article
, but without author and date
information for the title.)
plainhtml
is available for other output formats, though it doesn't
really make sense to use it. If you want the most `portable' document
type, use one of article
, report
or book
.
The function of these macros is, globally, threefold. First, the macros must
send any commands that need to appear before `real' text to the output file.
E.g., the LaTeX output needs the right \documentstyle
preamble, HTML
output needs <html>
and <body>
tags.
Second, the macros define appropriate document-dependent settings. E.g., this
means that the LaTeX converter defines the title, author and date using
\title
etc..
Third, the actual document is started. In LaTeX this means a
\begin{
type}
, followed by the appropriate commands to generate
a the document title and the table of contents. The title
setting in the
above macros defines the document title which always appears on the front page
of the document. For HTML output, this is also the title of the HTML file (or
files), as appearing in the HTML <title>
tag.
The fact that the macros which define the document type perform many
functions, means that once the macro is started, nothing `extra' can be put
say between the generated title and the table of contents. Sometimes however
this is what you'd like; as is the case with an abstract. The Yodl package
therefore implements modifiers, that appear before the document type
macros.
Please send Yodl questions and comments to yodl@icce.rug.nl.
Please send comments on these web pages to (address unknown)
Copyright (c) 1997, 1998, 1999 Karel Kubat and Jan Nieuwenhuizen.
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium, provided this notice is preserved.