The PreTeXt Guide

A glossary is a list, in alphabetical order, of foreign or unfamiliar words, along with definitions. [1, 1.87]

A <glossary> division may be placed inside any main matter division, and at most once in the <backmatter>. In either event, the Chicago Manual of Style [1, 1.87] indicates that it should be placed right before a <references>.

After a <title>, index entries, and other metadata, a <glossary> division may begin with an optional <headnote>, which can use paragraphs to explain anything unusual about the construction of a particular glossary.

The remainder of a glossary is a sequence of items to explain. Typically these are words, phrases, initialisms, or acronyms. Each item is a “glossary item”, enclosed in a shorthand <gi> element. The element must lead with a <title>, which is the term being explained. PreTeXt will provide a period after each defined word, so there should not be any punctuation in your source at this location. The term should not have any markup, unless the markup is used in every occurence of the term in the text. Similarly, a term is capitalized only if it is capitalized routinely in the text.

The explanation itself follows, typically in a sequence of paragraphs, but unnumbered items, such as an <image> may also be used. It is the author’s responsibility to create the list in alphabetical order. Automatic groupss (according to initial letter) are a pending feature request, perhaps especially for a final, overall, back matter glossary, much like an index. See GitHub #1971.

Many of the preceding recommendations can be found in Chicago Manual of Style [1, 2.28]. For an example, see the glossary in the back matter of this Guide.

This expands on Section 3.11. A <worksheet> is a specialized division, a peer of a <section> or <chapter>, intended for an in-class activity or a printable handout. Unlike most of PreTeXt, a worksheet gives precedence to printed output and the layout of a physical page; the HTML version is a faithful but less-capable representation.

A worksheet may open with a list of <objectives> and an <introduction>, and close with a <conclusion> and a list of <outcomes>. Its body is one or more <page> elements, one of the few places in PreTeXt where an author deliberately forces a page break. The principal content of a page is the <exercise>, authored exactly as in Section 4.3, though a page may also hold paragraphs, figures, and other ordinary content. A skeletal example to start from is given in Listing 17.0.1.

Two layout features are unique to a worksheet. An <exercise> (or a <task> within it) may carry a @workspace attribute, requesting a measured amount of blank working room for the student, such as workspace="4in" or workspace="1cm". And only inside a worksheet may an <exercise> be placed within a <sidebyside> (Section 4.24), so that exercises and figures can be arranged across the width of the page.

Because a worksheet is built for the printed page, the conversion to LaTeX realizes that layout directly: each <page> begins on a fresh sheet, and a requested @workspace becomes genuine blank room for the student to write in. The HTML version reads on screen like any other division, but also offers a print button—a printer icon, driven by JavaScript—that reflows the worksheet into the same paginated form, honoring the page breaks, the workspace, and the page margins, so a student can print a clean copy directly from a browser.

A publisher shapes the printed page without altering your source. The four page margins may be set in the publication file (with a @margin shortcut for all four), and a worksheet may be given custom headers and footers—specified separately for the first page and the running pages, each with left, center, and right content—so a worksheet can carry, for instance, a “Name” and “Date” line at the top. See Subsection 44.1.10 and Subsection 44.1.11 for these settings, and Subsection 44.3.9 for finer control of the LaTeX page.