How we build a paper
How we build a paper
How a Seeds of Renaissance paper goes from finished text to a PDF and a web page. Read this first if you're briefed to build one. Part of the SoR design system.
The aim
A paper should read as typeset and crafted, not word-processed, on paper and on screen. One text, marked once, gives every output: the PDF, the web page, the launch images.
Three layers and a pipeline
| Layer | Question it answers | Where it lives |
|---|---|---|
| Design system | What does it look like? Colours, faces, components, what a pull quote or summary box looks like | This system: colour, type, components, diagrams |
| Paper anatomy | What is a paper made of, and in what order? Title page, imprint, contents, chapters, back matter; how often a pull quote may appear | print.md, with mockups |
| Editorial craft | Given this text, what do we pull out and emphasise? Standfirsts, pull quotes, summary boxes, epigraphs, emphasis | A skill in pdf-report-publishing (skills/pdf-report, step 5) |
| Pipeline | How do marked text and a style become a PDF or a page? | Typst, in pdf-report-publishing |
Take a pull quote. The design system says how it looks and how often it may appear. The craft says which sentence to pick: verbatim, 12 to 30 words, a claim. The pipeline turns the mark into a page.
Steps
- Final text in Markdown. One master per paper (for 2R papers,
2rbook/<topic>/essay.md). Title page fields live only in its front matter. - Editorial pass. Mark what the text needs to read well. If the authors already marked summaries and quotes, add only the obvious.
- Figures. Redraw in house style and sign them (diagrams.md).
- Cover. Designed separately from the cover art, built as HTML (print.md). Promo crops come from the art, not from the cover.
- Render. The PDF follows the anatomy of a paper, in the Typst
sorstyle; the cover goes in as page 1. The web page goes on secondrenaissance.net. - Check. Compare against the anatomy, the mockups and the front matter.
Then publish and announce: for 2R papers, see 2rbook/docs/publishing-a-white-paper.md.
Open work
Tracked in beads, not here: bd list --label area:print in this repo, bd ready in pdf-report-publishing.
