RE: [xep-support] Preserving whitespace in programlisting output

Hi David,
 
In general I agree with you that HTML might be a better choice for online reading, but the readers require PDFs in this case, so
creating another format is not an option.
 
We use CHM and PDF for User guides and PDF for sysadm, installation and upgrade guides.
 
The installation engineers use the PDF both online and in binders. Mostly they copy commands but occasionally they copy chunks of
code, like this:
 
WISE =
(DESCRIPTION =
(ADDRESS_LIST =
(ADDRESS =
(PROTOCOL = TCP)(HOST = <WISE_HOST>)(PORT = 1521)
)
)
(CONNECT_DATA = (SERVICE_NAME = WISE)
)
)
 
which was copied from a PDF loosing all the indention.
 
Btw, I don't have a problem with tabs since we don't use tabs in our programlistings, but rather with whitespaces which I'd expect
would be available in the PDF.
 
/Kenneth

--------------------------------------------------------
Kenneth Johansson Technical Documentation Manager
Sectra Imtec AB
Teknikringen 20 E-mail: ke-joh AT sectra DOT se
SE-583 30 Linköping Phone: +46 13 23 52 00
SWEDEN Web: http://www.sectra.se <http://www.sectra.se/>

  _____

From: owner-xep-support@renderx.com [mailto:owner-xep-support@renderx.com] On Behalf Of David Cramer (Tech Pubs)
Sent: den 8 juli 2005 17:12
To: xep-support@renderx.com
Subject: RE: [xep-support] Preserving whitespace in programlisting output

Kenneth,
This doesn't address the details of your actual question, but my gut tells me that cutting and pasting from pdf to code is not a
good idea. Aside from your issue with tabs, what about listings that don't fit well on a page (so you break lines with an arrow
indicating that you've done it--the docbook xsls can do this automatically now). One of the reasons we do our docs in DocBook is to
provide pdf (for printing) and html formats. We have an eclipse infocenter running standalone to serve up all the docs in a
convenient, searchable format to services. From there, they can also get pdfs or chms of individual docs (e.g. to print a portion or
send an individual doc to somebody) or the whole infocenter for offline use. Another alternative is having the xsls spit out the
programlistings as separate text files in a code samples directory with some naming convention that would make it easy to go from
the pdf to the code sample (then even using callouts in the listings would be no problem). But if they're reading online anyway,
wouldn't html be a more suitable format?
 
David

  _____

From: owner-xep-support@renderx.com [mailto:owner-xep-support@renderx.com] On Behalf Of Kenneth Johansson
Sent: Friday, July 08, 2005 8:31 AM
To: Xep-Support
Subject: [xep-support] Preserving whitespace in programlisting output

Hi,
 
I'm using DocBook <programlisting> a lot for showing chunks of code etc. From what I've deducted from reading on the support mailing
list I gather that tabs in <programlisting> are replaced with a single whitespace.
 
I'm using whitespaces in my <programlisting> but when I try to select the result in a PDF I only select the text, not a single
whitespace. Is this behavior a Acrobat Reader "feature" or is it a XEP bug, or is it possible to tweak XEP to keep the whitespaces?
 
This is quite a serious problem for us since our service engineers wish to copy the content of these <programlisting>'s and insert
it in scripts etc. In some cases the indention is vital, and when pasting 50 rows of code its quite irritating to have to reindent
the text.
 
Best regards,
 
/Kenneth
 

--------------------------------------------------------
Kenneth Johansson Technical Documentation Manager
Sectra Imtec AB
Teknikringen 20 E-mail: ke-joh AT sectra DOT se
SE-583 30 Linköping Phone: +46 13 23 52 00
SWEDEN Web: http://www.sectra.se <http://www.sectra.se/>

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Received on Mon Jul 11 05:20:47 2005