On Sun, 5 Apr 2009 21:21:16 +0200
Christian Faulhammer <fauli@g.o> wrote:
> Ciaran McCreesh <ciaran.mccreesh@...>:
> > I'm going to be with laptop stuck in the middle of wet, miserable,
> > rainy nowhere
> 
>  That sounds like Scotland.

Scotland has working interwebnets! I'm going to be in The North, which
is far worse.

> a) redefine \label, so it always displays its parameter in the margin.
> b) use a new \pmslabel and \pmsref command which will set a label and
> display it in the margin without touching the original \label command.
> \pmsref would then display something like "eapi2:phase:src_install on
> page 5".  So using \ref will still return the section.
> 
> Implementation differs only in detail, a) allows using the standard
> commands, b) needs the writer to think about what he does.  I vote for
> b) as a) may break in funny environments as floats and friends (table,
> figure, minipage etc.).

b) is fine. If there's any chance a) will cause weird breakages, we
should probably avoid it for sanity's sake.

>  Next thing.  Putting those labels in the margin of the page makes it
> quite crowded.  From a typographical point of view your page layout is
> just horrible.  So I propose a redesign of the text and white space
> proportions, which will lead to larger margins all around (and pushing
> the PMS beyond 100 pages, according to my first test runs)

Mmm. The problem with pushing that too far is that you end up with two
paragraphs on a page... I'm already printing 2-up for when I want to
read PMS properly. Don't make me have to buy an ebook reader!

>  Timeframe?  You want EAPI 3 to go in before I do my stuff here:
> 
> i) factor out pms.cls and comment the preamble a bit
> ii) cheat sheet with EAPI 3
> iii) provide named \label and \ref commands
> iv) redesing page layout

Are you comfortable working off my eapi-3 branch that I rebase every
now and again?

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh