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Though identical in treatment, mom provides two kinds of cover pages: document cover pages (”doc covers”), and section cover pages (which I shall refer to simply as cover pages).
A doc cover is what you’d most likely use at the start of a collated document, where you might want the name of the complete document, the author(s) and the copyright line to appear. Another place you might use a doc cover is for a novel, where you want the title of the novel, not the chapter title or chapter number, as the first cover page.
A cover is what you’d use for pages that separate sections of a collated document, ie title pages. A cover page (but not a doc cover) in a collated document could, for example, simply read: ”PART 1”.
In non-collated documents (say, an essay) you can use either a cover or doc cover to generate the cover sheet.
In addition, nothing prevents you from generating both a doc cover and a cover for every document in a collated document. Or you can selectively disable the automatic generation of either doc covers or covers in a collated document on-the-fly.
Important note: Automatic generation of covers or doc covers after the first one(s) only takes place if you are working with collated documents. Mom provides no mechanism for saying ”print a section cover here even though I'm still working on the same (non-collated) document.”
By default, mom typesets covers and doc covers identically to docheaders (see How to change the look of docheaders for a description of what a docheader looks like). The only differences are
You tell mom what you want to appear on cover pages through the arguments you pass to COVER and/or DOC_COVER. Provided you have already given mom the appropriate reference macros (eg TITLE or AUTHOR), she will output covers and doc covers identically to how she would output docheaders containing the same information.
By default, mom starts covers and doc covers one-third of the way down the page. This can be changed through the use of the control macros COVER_ADVANCE / DOC_COVER_ADVANCE.
If you request copyright information (and have already given mom the reference macro, COPYRIGHT), she sets it, by default, in a smaller point size in the bottom right hand corner of the cover or doc cover. The position, as well as all of the standard typesetting parameters, can be altered via control macros.
Similarly, if you request miscellaneous information (and have already given mom the reference macro, MISC), she sets it, by default, in a smaller point size in the bottom left hand corner of the cover or doc cover. As with the copyright, the position and type specs can be altered via control macros.
Mom does not set any headers or footers on cover pages. Neither does she set any page numbers. From the point of view of pagination, covers and doc covers are by default considered ”null” pages. If you wish them to be included in the pagination scheme (even though no page numbers appear), you must tell mom that’s what you want with the macros DOC_COVERS_COUNT_PAGES and/or COVERS_COUNT_PAGES.
Finally, if you want to design your own cover page(s), you can always typeset them (using the typesetting macros), invoke .NEWPAGE, set up your document (see Tutorial – Setting up a mom document), and lastly invoke .START. The cover page, and any typesetting commands on it, will have no effect on mom’s processing of the document after you invoke .START.
Note: These macros should be placed in the style sheet section of your document setup (see Tutorial – Setting up a mom document), ie after PRINTSTYLE (and/or DOCTYPE and/or COPYSTYLE), but before START.
COVER and DOC_COVER behave identically. The reason mom provides two macros for cover page generation is so that you can have two different kinds of covers with different information on each.
Imagine, for a moment, you’ve written a document comprised of three sections. When you COLLATE the document for output, you could use DOC_COVER to generate a cover page that contained the name of the entire document, your (the author’s) name, and perhaps the copyright date. Subsequently, you could use COVER, after each .COLLATE but before each .START, to generate a cover page (or cover ”sheet”, if you prefer) containing just the name of the section.
Both COVER and DOC_COVER, whenever invoked, require a first argument, as listed above. This first argument will become the first bit of information mom prints on the cover or doc cover (ie the title).
In order for the information to appear, you must, of course, have given mom the appropriate reference macro. A list of first arguments with their equivalent reference macros follows.
• CHAPTER
The CHAPTER argument will print the
CHAPTER_STRING
concatenated with the chapter number you gave to
CHAPTER.
For example, assuming a vanilla setup for your chapter:
.CHAPTER 1
.CHAPTER_TITLE "The Bonny Blue Yonder"
.COVER CHAPTER \"(or .DOC_COVER CHAPTER)
will print (and only print)
Chapter 1
• CHAPTER_TITLE
The CHAPTER_TITLE argument will print the chapter title
you gave to
CHAPTER_TITLE.
For example, assuming a vanilla setup for your chapter:
.CHAPTER 1
.CHAPTER_TITLE "The Bonny Blue Yonder"
.COVER CHAPTER_TITLE \"(or .DOC_COVER CHAPTER_TITLE)
will print (and only print)
The Bonny Blue Yonder
• CHAPTER+TITLE
The CHAPTER+TITLE argument will print both the
concatenated chapter string+number and the chapter title. For
example, assuming a vanilla setup for your chapter:
.CHAPTER 1
.CHAPTER_TITLE "The Bonny Blue Yonder"
.COVER CHAPTER+TITLE \"(or .DOC_COVER CHAPTER+TITLE)
will print
Chapter 1
The Bonny Blue Yonder
The remainder of the arguments to COVER and DOC_COVER are optional. They refer specifically to the information you gave the reference macros bearing the same name as the arguments. You may enter as many or as few as you like, in any order.
When you pass COVER or DOC_COVER
the argument, DOCTYPE, it refers to the argument you gave
to
DOCTYPE NAMED.
For example, if, in your
docstyle macros
you gave a
.DOCTYPE NAMED "Abstract"
the argument, DOCTYPE, given to the COVER or DOC_COVER
macros, would mean that you wanted the word, Abstract, to appear on
the cover or doc cover underneath the title and/or author(s), just
as it would in the
docheader.
If the final argument to DOC_COVER or COVER is BLANKPAGE, mom will insert a blank page after the doc cover or cover. This is particularly useful if you intend to print your document two-sided, since, in two-sided printing, there may be instances where you do not want text on the reverse side of cover or title pages.
If you enable DOC_COVERS_COUNT_PAGES and/or COVERS_COUNT_PAGES, the blank page will be taken into account in the pagination scheme, though no page number appears on it. Otherwise, blank pages are invisible to mom's pagination.
By default, mom identifies doccovers in the outline panel of PDF viewers with the prepended string, “Cover:”, and covers with the string “Title Page:”. If you would like to change the strings, pass the PDF_OUTLINE_LABEL argument to COVER or DOCCOVER, along with the new string.
By default, if you give mom a COVER or DOC_COVER directive, she will print the cover or doc cover. In a document that contains sections, articles or chapters formerly treated as ”one-off’s” but now being collated, such behaviour may not be desirable.
Mom lets you selectively enable or disable the generation of covers and/or doc covers with the toggle macros, COVERS and DOC_COVERS. Because they’re toggle macros, simply invoking them by themselves enables automatic cover or doc cover generation, while invoking them with any argument at all (OFF, QUIT, X, etc) disables cover or doc cover generation.
Note: You must place these macros prior to any instance of START. Since they’re ”on” by default, there’s no need to use them if you want covers. However, if you don’t, especially in the kind of scenario described above, the best place to put them (most likely with an OFF, NO, X, etc. argument), is immediately after the first invocation of START. By doing so, you ensure they meet the requirement of preceding all subsequent instances of START.
The default typographic appearance of the items on a cover or doc cover is identical to that of the items in a docheader. (See Docheader description for a description of the defaults.)
COPYRIGHT and MISC, which do not appear in docheaders, have the following default characteristics:
The defaults for the entirety of covers and doc covers, and all the elements thereon, can be changed with control macros whose defaults and arguments are identical to the corresponding control macros governing docheaders. The only difference is the name by which you invoke them.
A complete list of cover and doc cover control macros follows. Please refer to docheader control in order to get the defaults and any special instructions for usage.
Note:
COVER_COUNTS_PAGES and DOC_COVER_COUNTS_PAGES are toggle macros,
hence invoking them by themselves means that mom will consider
covers and doc covers in the pagination scheme; invoking them with
any argument (OFF, NO, X, etc.) means they are ignored.
The default is to ignore them.
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