Idea for a program to generate instructions
2013-05-14, 15:02 (This post was last modified: 2014-12-03, 4:54 by Jason Smith.)
2013-05-14, 15:02 (This post was last modified: 2014-12-03, 4:54 by Jason Smith.)
In the last few days i've been toying with an idea for an Lpub like program to generate and paginate instructions.
The problem with these kind of programs is that all code to layout stuff is tedious and bug prone (all calculations on margin and alignement and relative positioning and stuff).
The idea is to use something that already does this job and i thought, why not HTML+CSS?
We can put all rendering images into div boxes, giving each box his css class like "assembly", "part list", "step num" etc, and building the appropriate CSS to handle positioning. CSS has plenty of options for this. CSS could be used also for font size, face and placement. One could customize his own CSSs and reuse them (instead of reentering his setup for each file as in LPub).
The generated html+css+images could be used by itself, or better with an integrated renderer we could generate png images just like LPub. It could also be postprocessed with any WYSIWYG html editor.
CSS has some advanced rules to control pagination.
Rendering of images could of course be handed off to LDView or another renderer just like LPub does.
What do you think ?
The problem with these kind of programs is that all code to layout stuff is tedious and bug prone (all calculations on margin and alignement and relative positioning and stuff).
The idea is to use something that already does this job and i thought, why not HTML+CSS?
We can put all rendering images into div boxes, giving each box his css class like "assembly", "part list", "step num" etc, and building the appropriate CSS to handle positioning. CSS has plenty of options for this. CSS could be used also for font size, face and placement. One could customize his own CSSs and reuse them (instead of reentering his setup for each file as in LPub).
The generated html+css+images could be used by itself, or better with an integrated renderer we could generate png images just like LPub. It could also be postprocessed with any WYSIWYG html editor.
CSS has some advanced rules to control pagination.
Rendering of images could of course be handed off to LDView or another renderer just like LPub does.
What do you think ?