Hi,

We have rather few suggestions and they are not coming anymore. So I am summarizing what we have so far. Since my typesetting vocabulary is meager I choose to present it graphically. Then again my apologies for poor graphics as I did not attempt it in metapost.

Below is the collection of the posts and attached is a pdf of a drawing generated in inkscape. I can send the original svg if needed.

Best regards,

Salil

______________________________________________________________

Salil:

Being able to flow multiple texts in parallel. A simple case is a translation of the same text running on opposite page while the original runs on left/right page. In my thesis these are not translations, but correlated texts written for different audiences. (think of levels in a CG game) So the texts need to be designed differently.

To extrapolate this facility, if columns on one page can run such parallel texts then we can have multiple translations running together.

Khaled:

Old Arabic book, essentially all early Bulaq Press books used to typeset

two books in one, one is the main book running on the body of the page,

while the other is a loosely related book running in the margins of the

page, the second book can be a commentary on the main book, but often

they just discuss the same subject with no direct correlation (not a

critical edition). I'd like to be able to reproduce such layout.

Taco:

I would like to do something slightly more general: it would be nice if

columnset blocks could take their input from streams, even if the block

is not a full column (or multiple columns).

Philipp:

three items I'd like to add:

  * horizontal split page layout (upper and lower parts instead of

    columns),

  * asymmetric stream combinations (e.g. two streams on the left page,

    another stream on the facing page), and

  * easy reprinting (i.e. a photographic reproduction as one stream on

    the left and a text stream on the right page).

I've seen all of this in printed books so it would be a pity to live in

a world where the best typesetting system can't do that. Some of this I

already mentioned to Hans a while ago, maybe he remembers.

Kevin:

I second the request to support horizontally split page layouts with one stream typeset above another on each page.

Hans:

it would help to see mockups for such requests

Salil:

I think this is good example of this function.

http://books.google.com/books?id=qdltz8N9qSEC&lpg=PP1&dq=the%20body%20multiple&pg=PA4#v=onepage&q&f=false

Philipp:

I got a less complex example from the library, in contrast to Salil's

example this one is a translation:

http://bayimg.com/oaoPpaaCh

http://bayimg.com/PAOpAAaCh

http://bayimg.com/pAopbaAch

http://bayimg.com/pAOpDAaCH

http://bayimg.com/PaoPeAAch

Shows clearly that the streams are synced at every section (and that

translation to English is a good compression for German…).