[reportlab-users] question about keepWithNext and multibuild

[adam hyde]

hi,

Thanks to Andy and Robin for the information. 

I am working with FLOSS Manuals - we write free documentation about free
software. At this moment we are automating the production of printed
manuals ( see http://en.flossmanuals.net/bin/view/Blog/BooksArrive )

Currently we build the TOC for the books using a routine in Pisa that
relies on multipass but unfortunately this breaks the keepWithNext.
keepWithNext is absolutely necessary for producing books otherwise the
inevitable headings appear at the bottom of pages detached from content
etc. Looks terrible.

So we are really needing to build a TOC without multipass. We just pick
up on h1 headings using Pisa as this is the only depth required in a
book TOC for our purposes. If anyone has a nice snippet for producing a
TOC without multipass we would very much appreciate it.

adam


On Tue, 2008-09-23 at 16:36 +0100, Andy Robinson wrote:

> 2008/9/23 Robin Becker <robin at reportlab.com>:

> > Currently the multi-pass builder which was introduced by Andy to allow

> > easier calculation of references/tables of content etc etc makes little

> > effort to clean up undesired changes made during each pass. Probably we need

> > to keep a list of structural changes that are made and reverse these prior

> > to succeeding passes. The alternative is to find better implementations of

> > keepWithNext and similar which remain invariant after first usage.

> > --

> 

> I agree.  At the present time we have about 8 years accumulated features,

> some of which were wrong with hindsight, and it's hard to fix much more without

> breaking backward compatibility.

> 

> You know what I'd rather do?  Deprecate multi-pass altogether, and provide

> better documentation on the 'deferred drawing' tricks which make it

> reasonably easy to create indices and tables.

> 

> Adam, what are you actually trying to do?  There may be better ways to do it

> without multiple passes that sidesetp this.

> 

> - Andy

-- 
Adam Hyde
Founder FLOSS Manuals
http://www.flossmanuals.net