Rechtstexte & Zeitschriften

Rechtstexte and Zeitschriften are open access law journals edited by Prof. Dr. iur. Walter Boente (University of Zurich). They are published online in both HTML and PDF formats. The goal was to offer authors a small set of layout options for formatting their articles in PDF, using only web technologies; primarily HTML, CSS, and Paged.js.

2023 - in progress
Design and development of CSS print style sheets
Technologies used: Pandoc, Paged.js
Code avaible on Gitlab

Screenshot of your first three PDF pages of rechtstexte n5 with the second layout — Second proposed layout, graphic design by Julie Blanc

The publishing workflow is based on Pandoc and consists of simple Markdown files (content.md) and metadata files (meta.yaml). Authors can select their preferred layout and customize certain visual elements, such as the color layout or cover illustration. The content.md files are generated by the editor from Word or LibreOffice documents. The final PDF is generated directly in the browser via the print function in Chrome/Chromium, after rendering with the Paged.js polyfill.

The covers and the first layout were designed by Dorian Delnon (University of Zurich), and I designed the remaining layouts. I was responsible for the technical implementation of the layouts and the overall typesetting logic. The PDFs follow the standard A4 format, intended for archiving or printing on a standard office printer. There are currently three layouts available, and the project remains open to further development depending on future layout needs.

Screenshot of your first three PDF pages of rechtstexte n5 with the first layout — First proposed layout, graphic design by Dorian Delnon

Screenshot of your first three PDF pages of rechtstexte n5 with the third layout — Third proposed layout (with special sections for reproducing typescript letters), graphic design by Julie Blanc

Screenshot of meta.yaml file — meta.yaml file used to produce the HTML template with Pandoc