heading-like in a syllabus

[David W. Farmer]

It is common for syllabi and other learning resources to have
a heading like:

Math123 Number Theory Fall 2026

In case your email reader hid my intention, what I want to show
is "Math123" on the left, then "Number Theory" centered,
then "Fall 2026" on the right.

During Friday's "Accessible LaTeX in PreTeXt Plus" workshop,
someone asked how to have that output in PreTeXt. We were
stuck for an answer. Even if there were a way to hack that
visual appearance, that would not help a screen reader.

The visual separation into three parts reflects that those are
different types of elements. So it seems to me that we would
like a way to mark that in the source, and then have the output
preserve the meaning of those elements.

I don't have a specific proposal and would like to hear any ideas.

Regards,

David

[Rob Beezer]

<article>
<title>Number Theory</title>

<bibinfo>
<course>Math 123</course>
<semester>Fall 2026</semester> <!-- nee #term? -->
</bibinfo>

<syllabus-items/>

<paragraphs>
<title>Textbook</title>

<p>
<pubtitle>A First Course in Number Theory</pubtitle>, by David Farmer.
GFDL license.
</p>
</paragraphs>
</article>

[David W. Farmer]

The context was someone writing in LaTeX-style PreTeXt.

If we had each of those elements in a LaTeX style, then converting
to PreTeXt would give what we want.

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[Oscar Levin]

I definitely like the idea of adding course-related bibitems.  Figuring out how to display them is an interesting question.  Two cases:

1. Someone making a stand-alone syllabus article.  Then having frontmatter (I think that would need to wrap the <bibinfo>) makes sense, and then different outputs could have different layouts.  I know some folks like having just their syllabus as a document with multiple pages.  

2. A syllabus is the first division of a course "book".  This is what I like to do, because then I can have the entire syllabus on a single html page.  If I make it a "handout" then students can print it.  It is less clear how the title of the syllabus would get the sort of layout that we are looking for here though.

I think what I would actually recommend to the person trying to get this layout is to use a handout and then put the course and term in the first-page headers when printing.   Those can be set in the publication file so student get them by default too.  Might look weird though if the title of the handout (the class name) is not centered; maybe that should be a printint option or a style choice for the publication file.

Note that I have not done anything to wire up the header/footer for printouts in latex.  But we definitely could.

[Rob Beezer]

On 8/16/26 10:32, David W. Farmer wrote:
>
> The context was someone writing in LaTeX-style PreTeXt.

Well, I wouldn't know anything about that. ;-)

> If we had each of those elements in a LaTeX style, then converting
> to PreTeXt would give what we want.

The elements just need a schema specification, I think. Something like
<syllabus-items/> would need an implementation, likely as a preferred
alternative to just a #title by itself.

Rob

[Rob Beezer]

Right, frontmatter/bibitems, I guess. Mocked that up before my morning coffee. ;-)

(2) High cost for a new division. Simply observing.

Layout of the header. I used to use two or three lines left, two or three lines
right: my name, course number, course title, term, and "Course Guidelines" (my
colleagues in the humanities liked to remind us that we didn't really know how
to do a syllabus properly).

So the details would be in the implementation of #syllabus-items, which could
take attributes in source or in the publisher file to influence ordering and/or
placement. And of course, presence or absence of certain items conveys some
information.

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