Boost C++ Libraries: Ticket #5860: Coloring text in Quickbook

Daniel James — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 14:59:23 GMT

Docbook has no support for colours, see:

http://cygwin.com/ml/docbook/2005-05/msg00040.html

A possiblity is to have a tag to allow text to be marked up with a role (as we do for syntax highlighting). That can be coloured for web pages in css, but you'd have to work out how to colour that for pdfs, which appears to be done in tools/boostbook/xsl/fo.xsl. I'd prefer to have semantic roles rather than presentational. Any additions to the roles supported in that file should probably be mentioned on the list first.

? isn't available as it's already used for conditional phrases. I wouldn't want to use up an punctuation for this. There are only so many characters available, I don't want to waste them.

Paul A. Bristow — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 11:16:31 GMT

Replying to danieljames:

Docbook has no support for colours, see:

http://cygwin.com/ml/docbook/2005-05/msg00040.html

A possiblity is to have a tag to allow text to be marked up with a role (as we do for syntax highlighting). That can be coloured for web pages in css, but you'd have to work out how to colour that for pdfs, which appears to be done in tools/boostbook/xsl/fo.xsl. I'd prefer to have semantic roles rather than presentational. Any additions to the roles supported in that file should probably be mentioned on the list first.

I'd image many users would be quite happy with a small set (9?)of 'color highlighting' sematic roles? Even just one (red?) could be useful.

Perhaps something like the six (five) [h1 headings]? Or color admonitions?

Or is injection of XML to set color for a text item possible?

But I have too little understanding of how things are processed to make sensible suggestions.

? isn't available as it's already used for conditional phrases. I wouldn't want to use up an punctuation for this. There are only so many characters available, I don't want to waste them.

Of course, sadly, squiggles are in critically short supply, so I only put ? as a marker for any one chosen.

owner changed

Eric Niebler — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 02:18:02 GMT

owner changed from Eric Niebler to Daniel James

I don't own quickbook. Daniel, if you're not the owner, do you know who is?

status changed

Daniel James — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 10:49:35 GMT

status new → assigned

Replying to eric_niebler:

I don't own quickbook. Daniel, if you're not the owner, do you know who is?

It's Joel in trac, but it probably should be me. I don't know why this was assigned to you.

Daniel James — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 07:58:36 GMT

(In [75255]) Quickbook: role tag for 1.6. Refs #5860.

This implements the markup [role red Some red text]. Although I'm not sure I like it that much. It would be pretty easy to use a template for the same effect.

This is just the quickbook part of supporting coloured text, to complete the ticket there needs to be css support for html pages and xsl support for pdfs.

Paul A. Bristow — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 10:12:55 GMT

I've rebuilt using Quickbook in trunk (after 75255) changed the header to 1.6 and tried

[role red Some red text]

but it seems to be passed straight thru to the docbook and html as

<p>

[role red Some red text]

</p>

What am I missing? (apart from changes to .css to use this to redden)

anonymous — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 10:15:38 GMT

It's on the quickbook-dev branch.

Paul A. Bristow — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 12:13:48 GMT

OK - but I get a compile error in id_manager.cpp

Perhaps you are still working on this and I'm jumping the gun?

Not urgent, but red would be sexy ;-)

Wait until you put into trunk?

anonymous — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 12:31:07 GMT

Maybe a bit longer. I'm going to try to get the 1.6 stuff finished within the next release cycle, and ask for feedback. If it's positive, then I'll make 1.6 final and it'll be fine to use. Alternatively I could move the more controversial features to a later version number, so that some of the simpler things are ready earlier.

status changed; resolution set

Daniel James — Sun, 29 Sep 2013 11:33:09 GMT

status assigned → closed
resolution → fixed

1.6 is finally being released in 1.55. So this will be fixed then.

Paul A. Bristow — Thu, 10 Oct 2013 15:56:01 GMT

Added to boostbook.css to enable both color and align roles for html.

Revision: 86229 Author: pbristow Date: 10 October 2013 16:40:07 Message: Additions to implement colors from Quickbook 1.6.

But align feature (done in boostbook.css for html) is still not implemented.

Modified : /trunk/tools/boostbook/xsl/fo.xsl

for color feature for pdf (not done the align feature yet).

This file provides some helpful defs and templates for tick, cross etc

https://svn.boost.org/svn/boost/sandbox/guild/mylibrary/libs/mylibrary/doc/html4_symbols.qbk

and some very contrived demos at

https://svn.boost.org/svn/boost/sandbox/guild/mylibrary/libs/mylibrary/doc/mylibrary.qbk

For example...

[role red Some red text]

[*[role magenta [role aligncenter This is bold magenta and centered.]]]

['[*[role blue Some italic bold blue text]]]