alternatives to the concept of a page, Gutenberg press vs LCD screen

[Mike Marchywka]

All the dvi language and generally latex and typesetting seems stuck on the
idea of "setting" fixed pages that may as well be images like jpeg. HTML and
I guess PDF can be more flexible in how they are viewed ( this is for ignoring
things like data entry by user, just cases where a publisher wants to publish
a specific document or work  for a reader and options for the viewer to nagivate  ). 

Somone here indicated that companies like this approach as they know what the
document will look like when the viewer gets it - although in the
past anyway that may not have been the case with pdf IIRC. 

Computer generated documents can be structured or at least repetitive
and lengthy compared to attention span of audience. But mashing the
logical structure to fit a fixed page layout seems less important when
you do't need to literally etch the result in stone. 

Scrolling and paging sound like easy natural ways to navigate but
if you have played with collapsible sections in html documents 
it sometimes seems easier to just remove a logical section rather
than scroll or flip pages. 

I guess my question is how to "typeset" logical structure into
the compiled latex output- dvi or pdf or even html. 

I was playing with my own "special" macro's and modifications to the
xdvik viewer to indicate logical sections and it seems like a nice
thing to provide in the output. Dealing with things like BOP/EOP
was a bit of a problem I bypassed for now by using scroll size
paper ( I think it was 8 x 100 inches lol ).  

Has anyone had a reason to typset a scroll or other unnatural page
formats?

Thanks.



-- 

mike marchywka
306 charles cox
canton GA 30115
USA, Earth 
marchywka at hotmail.com
404-788-1216
ORCID: 0000-0001-9237-455X