[FM Discuss] Using drop-caps in FLOSS Manuals

[James Simmons]

Adam,

I was thinking about that myself.  Maybe using a different font family
for the first letter would be kind of neat too.  I'll be experimenting
with this.

The real experts on this kind of thing are Rebecca Malamud and Scotty
Auble of the Rural Design Collective.  They are the ones who came up
with the styled pages that will be used for their edition of the book.
 My own experience with stylesheets is limited to corporate websites.
Maybe they could be convinced to do a post on fancy stylesheets.

James Simmons


On Thu, Sep 23, 2010 at 11:39 PM, adam <adam at xs4all.nl> wrote:
> wowsa
>
> i put the css you suggested into objavi and rendered reading and sugar :
> http://objavi.flossmanuals.net/books/ReadingandSugar-en-2010.09.24-06.34.29.pdf
>
> coool........
>
> could you use something like:
> background-image:url('wallpaper.png');
>
> to make the background more interesting?
>
>
> also...any chance of a blog post about this when you get some time
> James?
>
> adam
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, 2010-09-23 at 16:18 -0500, James Simmons wrote:
>> If you checked out the styled pages that the Rural Design Collective
>> put together for my book you probably admired the drop caps that begin
>> the first paragraph in each chapter.  I though these were done with
>> image files but it turns out that you can do this with styles, like
>> this:
>>
>> p.intro:first-letter {
>>    display:block;
>>    float:left;
>>    border:3px solid #A64942;
>>    padding:5px;
>>    margin:4px 9px 4px 5px;
>>    font-size:73px;
>>    background-color: #FAD492;
>>    font-style: normal;
>>    color: #1C4501;
>> }
>>
>> You need to make the first <p> tag on the page have a class like this:
>>
>> <p class="intro">
>>
>> I was able to get the drop caps into my PDF using a custom style
>> sheet.  I wanted them to be in my web page as well, so I used a
>> <style> tag to add the style at the top of the page.  The results can
>> be seen here:
>>
>> http://en.flossmanuals.net/bin/view/ReadingandSugar/Introduction
>>
>> If you run this through OBJAVI using the default style sheet the
>> <style> in the page is ignored when creating a PDF.  You need to use a
>> custom style sheet with the drop cap style included.
>>
>> While this effect may not be suitable for every FM the book I'm doing
>> is about e-books so it's kind of appropriate.  Any thoughts?
>>
>> James Simmons
>> _______________________________________________
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>> Discuss at lists.flossmanuals.net
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>
>
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