Re: [Docutils-develop] Functionnal LaTeX writer

[Adam C. <ad...@ch...>]

On 24 Sep 2002 12:00:55 +0100 Alexander Schmolck <a.s...@gm...> wrote:

[...]
> Take pictures, for example. You have to supply a file extension (which I
> think is a bad idea) and can only specify height and width in pixels (which
> is not meaningful for e.g. latex documents and might even become less
> relevant for web development with a shift of emphasis to vector based
> formats). I think it would be better if the extension were left unspecified
> as a default, so that the same document could be processed by different
> writers that include the most suitable image with the specified name for the
> given output format. As an example, the html writer might include the file
> 'flower.png', whereas the latex writer would presumably be better of with
> 'flower.eps' if that also existed.

There is a similar problem with link targets. Say for example that you have a
collection of documents, that link each other. If you want to call your output
files descriptively, like .html, .pdf, etc based on filetype, link targets
will break.

__ path/to/foo.html

You need to call it foo.html, since otherwise it won't find the file. But if
you output something else than html, this will break the link. This means that
the input files are dependant on the output, which is bad...

The nicest solution would IMHO be if you could somehow only write:

__ path/to/foo

And docutils would add the .html extension automatically if you're generating
HTML, but ,pdf if you're generating PDF. The problem is ofcourse that
sometimes you really want to link to a file of a different type...

---
Adam Chodorowski <ad...@ch...>

The dotcom dream - where young, talentless egotists could pretend they 
knew more about the world than everyone else and VCs indulged their 
fantasies for 18 months - has died. Thank god.
    -- Kieren McCarthy / The Register