WikiPublisher | TipOfTheWeek / 00055

Unnumbered chapters: Redefining the unnumbered chapters in books

The defaults for unnumbered chapters don’t meet my needs. How do I change this behavior?

An ornamental horn of plenty

By default, Wikipublisher books recognise certain chapters as “unnumbered”:

the Preface comes first, before the table of contents; wherever an author puts it in the list of chapters, Wikipublisher prints it first
the Introduction, Acknowledgments, Prologue, Epilogue and Colophon are printed in the order specified in the list of chapters

This may not be the behaviour the author desires.

The $ChapterKindFmt array allows the administrator to change this behaviour, either on a per-group basis, or site-wide. Wikipublisher looks for the special chapter names Preface, Introduction, Acknowledgments, … and allocates a “kind” attribute to the corresponding chapter tag.

This default interpretation can be changed. Suppose an author wants the unnumbered chapter before the table of contents to be called Abstract and wants the Foreword to be unnumbered. Add the following to either the Group.php or config.php files:

    $ChapterKindFmt['preface'] = 'Abstract';
    $ChapterKindFmt['introduction'] = 'Foreword';

In another example, an author may want to print the Preface after the table of contents. Add the following to the Group.php or config.php files:

    $ChapterKindFmt['preface'] = 'Abstract';
    $ChapterKindFmt['introduction'] = 'Preface';

We have to redefine $ChapterKindFmt[‘preface’] even if we don’t want an opening chapter; otherwise, Wikipublisher will treat the preface as a preface and not as an introduction.

In another case, an author may want to treat the Introduction as a numbered chapter. Add the following to the Group.php or config.php files:

    $ChapterKindFmt['introduction'] = 'Preface';

Of course, if there is a chapter called Preface, Wikipublisher will treat this as unnumbered.

Category: metadata

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