The macro package supports four document types: article, report, book and the manual page. Note that document types have nothing in common with output formats; a book can be converted to each of the output formats, and a manual page can be converted to a .dvi file. Nevertheless, some formats are more useful for some document types. A book that is converted to the man output format to be later processed with groff won't look too good; a better conversion to ASCII would be via the ms output format. Each document must be started by specifying the document type. The relevant macros are:
  • article(title)(author)(date): The article document type is meant for short documents. The macro arguments specify the title of the document, the author and the date. In articles, the title page is numbered and the table of contents is on the title page. The sectioning commands sect, subsect etc. are available.
  • report(title)(author)(date): The report document type differs from an article in that it has a separate unnumbered title page, a table of contents on its own page, and the sectioning command chapter. A report is meant for larger documents.
  • book(title)(author)(date): The book type is for still larger documents. It supports the sectioning command part.
  • manpage(title)(section)(date)(source)(manual): The manpage document type is specifically meant to write manual pages, as found on Unix systems. It uses its own sectioning commands to reflect the necessary sections in a manual page. This document format is described separately in ??.
  • plainhtml(title): This document type is typically used in HTML output. It's implemented for situations where you only need to create a HTML file, but want to use the Yodl package to help you with handy macros. Except for the fact that no author and date arguments are necessary, this document type is similar to article. (In fact, you can emulate plainhtml by using an article, but without author and date information for the title.) plainhtml is available for other output formats, though it doesn't really make sense to use it. If you want the most `portable' document type, use one of article, report or book.
  • The function of these macros is, globally, threefold. First, the macros must send any commands that need to appear before `real' text to the output file. E.g., the LaTeX output needs the right \documentstyle preamble, HTML output needs <html> and <body> tags. Second, the macros define appropriate document-dependent settings. E.g., this means that the LaTeX converter defines the title, author and date using \title etc.. Third, the actual document is started. In LaTeX this means a \begin{type}, followed by the appropriate commands to generate a the document title and the table of contents. The title setting in the above macros defines the document title which always appears on the front page of the document. For HTML output, this is also the title of the HTML file (or files), as appearing in the HTML <title> tag. The fact that the macros which define the document type perform many functions, means that once the macro is started, nothing `extra' can be put say between the generated title and the table of contents. Sometimes however this is what you'd like; as is the case with an abstract. The Yodl package therefore implements modifiers, that appear before the document type macros.
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    Copyright (c) 1997, 1998, 1999 Karel Kubat and Jan Nieuwenhuizen.

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