6.2 Page layout and navigation panel overview

A page is broken up in three parts. A page header, the sections and a page footer. A common element in the page layout is a navigation panel with icons or text linking to other sections or pages. Another common element is a rule, separating sections or footer. The navigation panel and the rules may be part of the sections or part of headers or footers. You may use the variables $SMALL_RULE, $DEFAULT_RULE, $MIDDLE_RULE and $BIG_RULE for rules of different sizes. The defaults are

$SMALL_RULE = '<hr size="1">';
$DEFAULT_RULE = '<hr>';
$MIDDLE_RULE = '<hr size="2">';
$BIG_RULE = '<hr size="6">';

In the header some important meta data may be defined, like the title or style information, and textual informations may be present in comments. All this doesn't appear directly in the displayed HTML, though.

The page layout is mainly controlled by functions, the precise functions called depending on the document splitting. The navigation panel, however, can be customized with variables.

Element labels

There are 19 items associated with elements. Each of these is associated with a name and a reference to the element they represent, when such an element exists. The element is either a global element or an element relative to the current element. The relative elements are found with respect with the document structure defined by the section structuring commands (@chapter, @unnumbered…) or by the nodes (in that case the node directions are specified on node line or in menu organization). These items are called element labels. They may be associated with a button (see section Specifying the buttons formatting), and used in the formatting functions (see section Main program variables and usefull functions).

Here is the list:

‘ ’

An empty button

Top

Top element. The associated name is $TOP_HEADING if that variable is defined. This variable is not set by default.

Contents

Table of contents

About

About (help) page

Overview

Overview, short table of contents

First

First element in reading order

Last

Last element in reading order

Index

The first chapter with @printindex. The associated name is $INDEX_CHAPTER, if the variable is set. This variable is not set by default.

This

The current element

Back

Preceding element in reading order

FastBack

Beginning of this chapter or previous chapter if the element is a chapter

Prev

Previous section on the same level

NodePrev

Previous node

Forward

Next element in reading order

FastForward

Next chapter

Next

Next section on the same level

NodeNext

Next node

Following

Next node in node reading order

Up

Up section

NodeUp

Up node

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