The PreTeXt Guide

The stylesheet pretext-latex.xsl can produce two very similar outputs. Each is a file in LaTeX syntax, which can be converted to a PDF with a LaTeX executable (“engine”). However, there are two purposes for such a PDF. The first is a document which is meant to be read on a screen. We call this an electronic PDF. The second is meant to be printed as a physical book, so it would be the file you provide to a copy shop, campus bookstore, or print-on-demand service (see Chapter 43). We call this a print PDF. So as you read this, keep in mind that the LaTeX conversion is really two-converters-in-one.

To illustrate the difference, an electronic PDF will contain cross-references that are active, and colored to be obvious to the reader. For the print PDF the same cross-reference will be black, inactive, and by default contain the page number of the target. Another difference is the print PDF will include trailing parentheticals with the content of @visual when using <url>. This allows readers of the print version to visit a URL that has clickable text in other formats.

A wide <figure>, <table>, <list>, or <listing> will be presented horizontally by default, but including a @landscape attribute whose value is yes will rotate these blocks by 90° in print PDF output (only) to take advantage of the full page height. This is presently only supported by images given by a @source and with an extension provided in the filename.

The publication file entry latex/@print controls the selection of the two output modes of this single stylesheet. The default is no for the electronic version, and yes will change to the print version. See Subsection 44.3.2 for the specifics of this entry.

In this chapter, we describe both of these two conversions together, since they are only slightly dissimilar.