template process and theory...

Signed-off-by: Alex A. Naanou <alex.nanou@gmail.com>
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Alex A. Naanou 2023-03-10 16:46:34 +03:00
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@ -89,6 +89,69 @@ $ make-images.sh --help
### The process
XXX spreads vs. pages
The system is designed to minimize the effort in laying out pages, so
when designing a book the focus should be on global templates and on
helping `make-images.sh` build them rather than trying to layout each
spread individually.
Here there are several ways to arrive at a book layout starting from the
concept, through the edit, sequencing, structuring and the graphic
design, we here will focus on the stage of the process where a body of
work is starting to look like a book.
When starting work on a book layout it is good to at least have a basic
understanding of it's:
- book structure and how it may change,
- core templates,
- exceptions from the above.
In most cases all of the above will change, and the main goal of this
stage is to make this change as simple as possible, the less effort is
needed to prove the need for change the simpler and more effortless this
change will be -- it's all about providing the freedom to make changes
instead of locking oneself into the work/time already invested.
The first question is what is the _structure_ of the book we are making?
Will it have chapters? How many? Text, how much, how should it be
structured? How are we going to deal with the title? How are we going
to present the images, full bleed, no bleeds, small, big, one per page
or multiple images, ...etc.? At this stage this is about the presentation
the flow of the work and not about the actual design. How many typical
spreads (i.e. spread templates) should it have? A good number should be
small-ish, for example 3-4 spread templates is a good number, if you
count 10+ then you might be overcomplicating tings, but note, there are
no rules, a book where each spread is individually and manually layed out
may work as well as a book with just a single template spread, but in
general for a photo book the focus is on the project and the layout
should work with it without overwhelming it.
Have answers, good, now it's time to build those mock layouts and make
them into basic templates.
There are two ways to approach this:
- Page templates
These are typical pages that makeup a spread template, usually an
image page (`imagepage.tex`) and a text page (`textpage.tex`),
`make-images.sh` can combine them to build spreads automatically.
- Spread templates
These typeset a spread and can be either automatically inferred from
the structure or manually selected.
Note that `photobook` provides a set of ready high level templates
specifically designed for this approach.
#### Automatic template inference
#### Manual template selection
#### Template tweaking
#### Individual spread layouts
### Templates