In recent posts I used my existing LaTeX class and style files to make the pictures for the posts.
I created those LaTeX files more than ten years ago. They’ve been updated and and otherwise changed as I had more ideas and learned things.
Like many systems that have evolved, much of it made sense at the time… but less so now.
Never minding how I have it organized now (read: poorly), I see I’ll want modules for these topics.
- Colors. This means both defining the various color schemes I’ve described lately, and code to assign colors by scheme.
- Diagrams. The original was built piecemeal, and I know more about the topic now. With the changes to the diagram content, I don’t think any of them cannot be done with matrices. With that in mind, I can make things a lot easier for myself. I’ll also want to simplify/normalize the node styling, and respect the rules I described last post.
- Object header blocks. This was largely sorted out years ago, but I want to bring it in alignment with the recent posts. As with nodes, they’ll need to respect the rules I described last post.
- Unlike diagram nodes, object headers can have stat blocks and other decorations. This changes how the header is drawn.
- Different object types can have different column and page breaking rules.
- Document heading blocks. Chapters, sections, and so on, I want to revise how they look. I think they can gain from some of what I do with the object headers.
- The Echelon Reference Series is all about game objects, but I do write other things. I can imagine having books that don’t have ‘objects’ in the same sense. I’ll need the document heading blocks to not depend on the object header blocks.
- I found sometimes subdocument headings can themselves have attributes. ‘Stat blocks’, if you will, such as showing an article’s author and abstract in a collection of articles.
- Page decorations. I’ve kept them very simple to date, but I would like to make them more useful. I can see how they can add some visual appeal to the page also, though that’s a lesser concern.
- Hyperlinks. I want only resolved links to be drawn as links. When I started on the Echelon Reference Series I had to make multiple LaTeX passes to fix the links. My new workflow has everything I need to solve these before I render in LaTeX. I can greatly simplify the LaTeX processing.
- Document style. Right now I’m locked into a basic two-column style (which by and large I’m okay with). I want to explore other options, especially one based on Edward Tufte’s work.
The code for these six topics is scattered across 18 style files, plus one class file. I believe each topic can be more focused into a single file, making each one more cohesive and reduce coupling.