In short
An essay on a poem by Keats, as a literary journal prints it. The author writes a short code for each source; Postext prints the author and page in brackets and the list of works cited at the end, in MLA style.
What you'll build
An essay from a literary quarterly: four pages on who speaks the last two lines of Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn". The page is a 150 × 230 mm journal page set in Spectral, with section heads and running heads in Spectral SC, and the opener sits in a band the colour of black glaze over a strip of red clay, the two colours of an Attic vase. The citations follow MLA 9, the style of most literature and art history departments: the author and the page in brackets, the page alone when the sentence names the author, a short title when two works share an author, and a Works Cited list on its own page. Every citation is a key in the text and the style is one setting.
This recipe answers
- How do I cite works and build the bibliography in APA, IEEE or another citation style?
The short answer
// The text cites with [@keats-letters, 48] → (Keats, Letters 48): MLA prints the author
// and the page, and adds a short title when two works share an author. [-@eliot1932, 230]
// drops the name the sentence already gives → (230). The list is alphabetical, and a
// second work by the same author opens with a dash (MLA's ---) instead of the name.
registerCitationEngine(createCiteprocEngine({ styles: STYLES, locales: LOCALES }));
const citations = {
style: 'modern-language-association', // MLA 9th edition, author-page
link: true, // a citation jumps to its entry in Works Cited
bibliography: {
// MLA's half-inch hanging indent, scaled to a 108 mm measure.
fontSize: em(0.94), lineHeight: pt(13.4), hangingIndent: em(2.2), entrySpacing: pt(3),
},
};
MLA 9 author-page citations and a Works Cited list
Ingredients
- Features
- Citations in a citation styleBibliography from the referencesDesigned openersHeading attributesHeading stylesRunning heads and foliosMirrored marginsParagraph stylesSemantic colour palettePDF export
- Also uses
- Cross-referencesPaper colourHeads by page roleFonts embedded in the PDFExplicit vertical space
- Type
- Spectral, Spectral SC (SIL OFL 1.1)
- Assets
- None: every picture is drawn in code
Method
#1 · The style is MLA, the data are CSL
The code is the short answer above. The citation engine is registered once and citations.style names the bundled MLA style; citeproc-js writes each citation and the list from it. The references sit in a :::references{format=csl-yaml} block at the end of the essay. CSL-YAML is used here instead of BibTeX because MLA needs a short title for Keats's two works, and the BibTeX reader in postext 1.12.1 drops the shorttitle field; in CSL the field is title-short.
#2 · Three kinds of citation
The text cites a work with [@jack1967], which prints "(Jack)" because the essay refers to the book as a whole. With a page, [@keats-letters, 41] prints "(Keats, Letters 41)": two works by Keats are cited, so citeproc adds the short title to tell them apart. When the sentence already names the critic, [-@eliot1932, 230] leaves the name out and prints "(230)". Once the ode has been cited with its line numbers, later quotations from it carry the numbers alone, typed in plain parentheses, as MLA allows.
#3 · A block quotation with its citation after the full stop
// More than four lines of prose go in a Markdown blockquote: in ink, indented, with no
// first-line indent. Its citation follows the final full stop, as MLA asks.
const blockquote = {
color: col('ink'), italic: false, indent: em(2), firstLineIndent: em(0),
};
The letter on Negative Capability runs to more than four lines of prose, so it is set off as a Markdown blockquote: upright, in ink, indented 2 em with no first-line indent. MLA puts the citation of a block quotation after its final full stop, and the source does the same: …fact and reason. [@keats-letters, 48]. A :::space{lines=0.5} above and below separates the quotation from the paragraphs around it.
#4 · Works Cited on a page of its own
headingStyles: [{ id: 'works-cited', breakBefore: { enabled: true, parity: 'any' } }],
The heading takes a style that breaks to a new page, and :::bibliography{title=""} places the list under it without a second title. The list is alphabetical with a hanging indent, and the second work by Keats opens with a three-em dash in place of his name, as MLA asks for repeated authors. A drop folio prints at the foot of this page and of the opener, where the running heads stand down.
#5 · The opener in two colours of a vase
const BAND = 116; // mm from the trim's top
const opener = {
enabled: true,
minHeight: mm(BAND - MARGIN.top + 4), // the text starts a line under the band
slot: { elements: [
{ kind: 'box', id: 'band', style: { backgroundColor: col('glaze') },
placement: { ...at('page', 'top-left'), size: { width: 'fill', height: mm(BAND) } } },
{ kind: 'box', id: 'foot', style: { backgroundColor: col('clay') },
placement: { ...at('page', 'top-left', 0, BAND - 3), size: { width: 'fill',
height: mm(3) } } },
{ kind: 'text', id: 'kicker', content: '{attr.kicker}', fontFamily: LABEL, fontWeight: 600,
fontSize: pt(9), letterSpacing: pt(1.6), color: col('slip'), align: 'left',
placement: at('container', 'top-left', 0, 6) },
{ kind: 'text', id: 'title', content: '{titleText}', fontFamily: TEXT, fontWeight: 300,
italic: true, fontSize: pt(56), lineHeight: 0.95, color: col('paper'), align: 'left',
overflow: 'wrap', placement: { ...at('container', 'top-left', -1, 30),
size: { width: mm(110), height: 'auto' } } },
{ kind: 'text', id: 'sub', content: '{attr.sub}', fontFamily: TEXT, fontWeight: 300,
fontSize: pt(13), lineHeight: 1.25, color: col('paper'), align: 'left', overflow: 'wrap',
placement: { ...at('container', 'top-left', 0, 66),
size: { width: mm(96), height: 'auto' } } },
{ kind: 'text', id: 'byline', content: '{attr.byline}', fontFamily: LABEL, fontWeight: 600,
fontSize: pt(9.5), letterSpacing: pt(1.2), color: col('slip'), align: 'left',
placement: at('container', 'top-left', 0, 82) },
] },
};
const palette = {
ink: '#1f1a17', glaze: '#231c19', clay: '#9a3d22', slip: '#e3a27e', rule: '#c9bdb0',
muted: '#6b6159', paper: '#fffdf9',
};
// A design element paints the hex written beside its paletteId (gotcha: palette-skips-designs).
const col = (id) => ({ hex: palette[id], model: 'hex', paletteId: id });
const colorPalette = Object.entries({ ...palette, 'main-color': palette.clay })
.map(([id, hex]) => ({ id, name: id, value: { hex, model: 'hex' } }));
The band is 116 mm deep and holds the kicker, the title at 56 pt in Spectral Light italic, the subtitle and the byline, all fed from attributes of the heading. The clay strip is a second box anchored 3 mm above the foot of the band.
The whole recipe
// ═══ Postext Cookbook · Nº 096 · A humanities essay with MLA works cited ══════════ // https://postext.dev/en/cookbook/mla-humanities-essay // Code: MIT · Text: original (CC BY 4.0) · Pictures: none // Fonts: Spectral, Spectral SC (SIL OFL 1.1) · Needs postext ≥ 1.12.1 import { buildDocument, renderPageToCanvas, clearMeasurementCache, registerCitationEngine, } from 'https://esm.sh/postext'; import { renderToPdf, decompressWoff2 } from 'https://esm.sh/postext-pdf'; import { createCiteprocEngine, STYLES, LOCALES } from 'https://esm.sh/postext-citeproc'; const LANG = 'en'; // @lang: the language of the sample document ('en' | 'es') const RECIPE = 'mla-humanities-essay'; // ─── 1 · Design ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── // #region palette: the black glaze and the red clay of an Attic vase const palette = { ink: '#1f1a17', glaze: '#231c19', clay: '#9a3d22', slip: '#e3a27e', rule: '#c9bdb0', muted: '#6b6159', paper: '#fffdf9', }; // A design element paints the hex written beside its paletteId (gotcha: palette-skips-designs). const col = (id) => ({ hex: palette[id], model: 'hex', paletteId: id }); const colorPalette = Object.entries({ ...palette, 'main-color': palette.clay }) .map(([id, hex]) => ({ id, name: id, value: { hex, model: 'hex' } })); // #endregion const TEXT = 'Spectral', LABEL = 'Spectral SC'; const TRIM = { width: 150, height: 230 }; // a literary quarterly const MARGIN = { top: 22, bottom: 22, inner: 19, outer: 21 }; const LEAD = 14.4; // pt const at = (to, edge, x = 0, y = 0) => ({ anchor: { to, edge }, offset: { x: mm(x), y: mm(y) } }); // #region answer: MLA 9 author-page citations and a Works Cited list // The text cites with [@keats-letters, 48] → (Keats, Letters 48): MLA prints the author // and the page, and adds a short title when two works share an author. [-@eliot1932, 230] // drops the name the sentence already gives → (230). The list is alphabetical, and a // second work by the same author opens with a dash (MLA's ---) instead of the name. registerCitationEngine(createCiteprocEngine({ styles: STYLES, locales: LOCALES })); const citations = { style: 'modern-language-association', // MLA 9th edition, author-page link: true, // a citation jumps to its entry in Works Cited bibliography: { // MLA's half-inch hanging indent, scaled to a 108 mm measure. fontSize: em(0.94), lineHeight: pt(13.4), hangingIndent: em(2.2), entrySpacing: pt(3), }, }; // #endregion // #region quotation: a block quotation, set in and upright // More than four lines of prose go in a Markdown blockquote: in ink, indented, with no // first-line indent. Its citation follows the final full stop, as MLA asks. const blockquote = { color: col('ink'), italic: false, indent: em(2), firstLineIndent: em(0), }; // #endregion // #region opener: the title in a band of black glaze with a red clay foot const BAND = 116; // mm from the trim's top const opener = { enabled: true, minHeight: mm(BAND - MARGIN.top + 4), // the text starts a line under the band slot: { elements: [ { kind: 'box', id: 'band', style: { backgroundColor: col('glaze') }, placement: { ...at('page', 'top-left'), size: { width: 'fill', height: mm(BAND) } } }, { kind: 'box', id: 'foot', style: { backgroundColor: col('clay') }, placement: { ...at('page', 'top-left', 0, BAND - 3), size: { width: 'fill', height: mm(3) } } }, { kind: 'text', id: 'kicker', content: '{attr.kicker}', fontFamily: LABEL, fontWeight: 600, fontSize: pt(9), letterSpacing: pt(1.6), color: col('slip'), align: 'left', placement: at('container', 'top-left', 0, 6) }, { kind: 'text', id: 'title', content: '{titleText}', fontFamily: TEXT, fontWeight: 300, italic: true, fontSize: pt(56), lineHeight: 0.95, color: col('paper'), align: 'left', overflow: 'wrap', placement: { ...at('container', 'top-left', -1, 30), size: { width: mm(110), height: 'auto' } } }, { kind: 'text', id: 'sub', content: '{attr.sub}', fontFamily: TEXT, fontWeight: 300, fontSize: pt(13), lineHeight: 1.25, color: col('paper'), align: 'left', overflow: 'wrap', placement: { ...at('container', 'top-left', 0, 66), size: { width: mm(96), height: 'auto' } } }, { kind: 'text', id: 'byline', content: '{attr.byline}', fontFamily: LABEL, fontWeight: 600, fontSize: pt(9.5), letterSpacing: pt(1.2), color: col('slip'), align: 'left', placement: at('container', 'top-left', 0, 82) }, ] }, }; // #endregion const head = (id, content, parity, edge, x, align) => ({ kind: 'text', id, content, parity, pages: 'body', fontFamily: LABEL, fontWeight: 500, fontSize: pt(8.5), letterSpacing: pt(1), color: col('muted'), align, placement: at('page', edge, x, 12), }); const config = () => ({ // a factory: the engine caches resolved configs per object locale: t({ en: 'en-us', es: 'es' }), // exact codes (gotcha: hyphenation-locales) colorPalette, citations, page: { sizePreset: 'custom', width: mm(TRIM.width), height: mm(TRIM.height), dpi: 150, backgroundColor: col('paper'), margins: { top: mm(MARGIN.top), bottom: mm(MARGIN.bottom), left: mm(MARGIN.inner), right: mm(MARGIN.outer), mirror: true }, }, layout: { layoutType: 'single' }, bodyText: { fontFamily: TEXT, fontSize: pt(10.6), lineHeight: pt(LEAD), color: col('ink'), boldColor: col('ink'), italicColor: col('ink'), referenceColor: col('ink'), textAlign: 'justify', firstLineIndent: mm(5), indentAfterHeading: false, hyphenation: { enabled: true }, optimalLineBreaking: true, avoidWidows: true, avoidOrphans: true, avoidRunts: true, blockquote, }, headings: { fontFamily: LABEL, fontWeight: 600, color: col('clay'), levels: [ // Restated: any headings object drops the H1 break (gotcha: headings-drop-h1-break). { level: 1, fontFamily: TEXT, fontSize: pt(56), marginBottom: pt(0), breakBefore: { enabled: true, parity: 'any' }, advancedDesign: opener }, { level: 2, fontSize: pt(11.5), letterSpacing: pt(0.9), lineHeight: pt(LEAD), marginTop: pt(LEAD), marginBottom: pt(LEAD / 2) }, ], }, // #region works-cited: MLA starts the list on a page of its own headingStyles: [{ id: 'works-cited', breakBefore: { enabled: true, parity: 'any' } }], // #endregion paragraphStyles: [ { id: 'colophon', fontFamily: LABEL, fontSize: pt(7.5), lineHeight: pt(10), color: col('muted'), textAlign: 'left', firstLineIndent: pt(0), marginTop: pt(LEAD * 2) }, ], header: { elements: [ head('verso-folio', '{pageNumber}', 'even', 'top-left', MARGIN.outer, 'left'), head('verso-author', '{attr.byline}', 'even', 'top-left', MARGIN.outer + 8, 'left'), head('recto-title', '{title}', 'odd', 'top-right', -(MARGIN.outer + 8), 'right'), head('recto-folio', '{pageNumber}', 'odd', 'top-right', -MARGIN.outer, 'right'), ] }, footer: { elements: [ // a drop folio where the running heads stand down { ...head('drop-folio', '{pageNumber}', 'all', 'top', 0, 'center'), pages: 'opener', placement: at('container', 'top', 0, 9) }, ] }, }); // ─── 2 · Content ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── const markdown = String.raw`---Markdown sample · 95 lines · content.en.md
title: "Cold Pastoral" author: "Helena Ward" --- # Cold Pastoral {#essay kicker="Essays · Romantic Poetry" sub="On the voice in the last two lines of Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn”" byline="Helena Ward"} No Greek urn answers to the one Keats describes. Readers who went looking for it in the British Museum found parts of several: the heifer led to sacrifice on the Parthenon frieze, which Keats saw among the Elgin Marbles in the spring of 1817, and the Bacchic dancers of the Townley Vase, with those of the Borghese Vase in the Louvre, known in London through engravings [@jack1967]. The nearest thing to a single source is a sheet of paper. Keats traced an engraving of the Sosibios Vase, a marble krater signed by an Athenian sculptor of the first century BCE, from Henry Moses’s book of antique vases, and the tracing survives [@mcdermott1948]. The urn of the poem is a composite, assembled from marbles and from prints of marbles, and at the end it speaks. Keats wrote the ode in May 1819. It was first printed in January 1820 in the *Annals of the Fine Arts*, a London magazine about painting and sculpture, and that summer he collected it in his third and last book of poems. The two printings differ in one mark of punctuation, and much of what has been written about the poem since turns on that mark. ## The questions The ode opens by naming its object three times, as a “still unravish’d bride of quietness,” a “foster-child of silence and slow time” and a “Sylvan historian” [@keats-ode, lines 1–3]. The names are a courtesy: the speaker wants the historian to tell its tale. “What men or gods are these? What maidens loth? / What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?” (8–9). The urn does not answer, and for three stanzas the speaker answers for it, praising the “unheard” melodies of the painted pipes over heard ones (11–12) and a lover who will never reach the girl but will always love her. The fourth stanza turns from the dancers to a procession, a priest leading a heifer “lowing at the skies” (33), and then to a town that is not on the urn at all, emptied of its people by the sacrifice and left silent “for evermore” (38). Here the questions stop being answerable even in principle. The town exists only because the procession has to have come from somewhere. ## The punctuation of the last lines In the last stanza the speaker gives up questioning. The urn “dost tease us out of thought / As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!” (44–45), and it will outlast this generation as “a friend to man, to whom thou say’st, / ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,’—that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know” (48–50). In the 1820 volume the inverted commas close after “beauty,” so the urn says five words and someone else says the rest. The *Annals* text has no inverted commas, and neither have the transcripts made by Keats’s friends [@stillinger1974]. An editor has to choose, and the choice decides who says “that is all”: the urn to mankind, the poet to his reader, or the poet to the figures on the urn. The lines have had hostile readers. T. S. Eliot found the couplet “a serious blemish on a beautiful poem” [-@eliot1932, 230], a statement that was either untrue or one he could not understand. Cleanth Brooks answered that the words are “a speech ‘in character’” [-@brooks1947, 165], fitted to the urn that utters them, and set them beside Edgar’s “Ripeness is all” in *King Lear*. His reading needs the 1820 punctuation: if the urn speaks only the five words inside the commas, the motto is the urn’s, and the comment after the dash belongs to the poet who has listened to it. ## The letters Keats had written about beauty and truth before he wrote about the urn. “What the Imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth—whether it existed before or not,” he told Benjamin Bailey in November 1817 [@keats-letters, 41]. A month later, walking home from the Christmas pantomime, he named the quality he thought a poet most needed: :::space{lines=0.5} > I had not a dispute, but a disquisition, with Dilke upon various subjects; several things dove-tailed in my mind, and at once it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature, and which Shakspeare possessed so enormously—I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason. [@keats-letters, 48] :::space{lines=0.5} Read with the letter beside it, the couplet is less a doctrine than a refusal. The urn has answered none of the speaker’s questions about who the figures are or where the town stands. What it offers instead is a sentence that cannot be checked, and the poet’s comment accepts that this is all the urn will give. The speaker who began by demanding a tale ends content with half knowledge, which is the state the letter asks a poet to bear. ## Works Cited {style="works-cited"} :::bibliography{title=""} :::paragraphs{style="colophon"} Set in Spectral and Spectral SC (SIL OFL). Text: original essay, CC BY 4.0; quotations from Keats’s 1820 volume and Colvin’s edition of the letters. ::: :::references{format=csl-yaml} - id: keats-ode type: chapter author: [{family: Keats, given: John}] title: Ode on a Grecian Urn title-short: Ode container-title: "Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems" publisher: Taylor and Hessey issued: 1820 page: 113-116 - id: keats-letters type: book author: [{family: Keats, given: John}] editor: [{family: Colvin, given: Sidney}] title: Letters of John Keats to His Family and Friends title-short: Letters publisher: Macmillan issued: 1925 - id: jack1967 type: book author: [{family: Jack, given: Ian}] title: Keats and the Mirror of Art publisher: Clarendon Press issued: 1967 - id: mcdermott1948 type: article-journal author: [{family: McDermott, given: William C.}] title: Keats and Sosibios container-title: The Classical Journal volume: 44 issue: 1 page: 33-34 issued: 1948 - id: stillinger1974 type: book author: [{family: Stillinger, given: Jack}] title: "The Texts of Keats’s Poems" publisher: Harvard UP issued: 1974 - id: eliot1932 type: chapter author: [{family: Eliot, given: T. S.}] title: Dante container-title: "Selected Essays, 1917–1932" publisher: Faber and Faber issued: 1932 - id: brooks1947 type: book author: [{family: Brooks, given: Cleanth}] title: "The Well Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry" publisher: Reynal and Hitchcock issued: 1947 :::`; // ─── 3 · Fonts ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── // Every face the design uses (gotcha: fonts-first). const FONTS = { Spectral: ['300', '300i', '400', '400i', '600', '600i'], 'Spectral SC': ['400', '500', '600'], }; // ─── 4 · Build & show ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────── await loadFonts(FONTS, markdown); const doc = await buildWithFonts(() => buildDocument({ markdown }, config()), markdown); const title = t({ en: 'A humanities essay with MLA works cited', es: 'Un ensayo de humanidades con obras citadas en MLA' }); showPages(doc, { title }); offerPdf(() => renderToPdf(doc, { fontProvider: fontsourceProvider }), `${RECIPE}.pdf`);Kit · core, fonts, viewer, pdf: the same in every recipe · 275 lines
// ─── Kit ── helpers shared by every Cookbook recipe · postext.dev/cookbook ───── // ─── Kit · core v1 ── the same in every recipe · postext.dev/cookbook ───────── function mm(value) { return { value, unit: 'mm' }; } function pt(value) { return { value, unit: 'pt' }; } function em(value) { return { value, unit: 'em' }; } /** The sample language's string: t({ en: 'Figure', es: 'Figura' }). */ function t(strings) { return strings[LANG] ?? Object.values(strings)[0]; } /** A file in this recipe's assets folder, served from the Postext repo by jsDelivr. */ function asset(file) { return `https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/drnachio/postext@main/cookbook/${RECIPE}/assets/${file}`; } // ─── Kit · fonts v1 ── the same in every recipe · postext.dev/cookbook ──────── // Postext measures text with the faces the browser has loaded, and caches the // widths, so every face must be ready before the first build. Faces come from // Fontsource: the same static files the PDF embeds, so screen and PDF agree. /** faces = { 'Family Name': ['400', '400i', '700'] }. `text` is the sample: * letters beyond Latin-1 (č, ł, ő…) also load the latin-ext files. With * `optional`, a face Fontsource does not ship is skipped instead of failing. * Resolves to the number of faces added. */ async function loadFonts(faces, text = '', { optional = false } = {}) { kitStatus('Loading fonts…'); const ranges = { latin: 'U+0000-00FF,U+0131,U+0152-0153,U+02BB-02BC,U+02C6,U+02DA,U+02DC,U+0304,U+0308,U+0329,' + 'U+2000-206F,U+20AC,U+2122,U+2191,U+2193,U+2212,U+2215,U+FEFF,U+FFFD', 'latin-ext': 'U+0100-02BA,U+02BD-02C5,U+02C7-02CC,U+02CE-02D7,U+02DD-02FF,U+0304,U+0308,U+0329,' + 'U+1D00-1DBF,U+1E00-1E9F,U+1EF2-1EFF,U+2020,U+20A0-20AB,U+20AD-20C0,U+2113,U+2C60-2C7F,U+A720-A7FF', }; const subsets = /[Ā-˿Ḁ-ỿ]/.test(text) ? ['latin', 'latin-ext'] : ['latin']; const jobs = []; let added = 0; for (const [family, specs] of Object.entries(faces)) { const id = fontsourceId(family); const meta = optional ? await fontsourceMeta(family) : null; for (const spec of new Set(specs)) { const weight = parseInt(spec, 10); const style = spec.endsWith('i') ? 'italic' : 'normal'; if (hasFace(family, weight, style)) continue; if (optional && !(meta?.weights.includes(weight) && meta.styles.includes(style))) continue; for (const subset of subsets) { const url = `https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/@fontsource/${id}@5/files/${id}-${subset}-${weight}-${style}.woff2`; const face = new FontFace(family, `url(${url}) format('woff2')`, { weight: String(weight), style, unicodeRange: ranges[subset] }); jobs.push(face.load().then((ready) => { document.fonts.add(ready); added++; }, () => { if (subset === 'latin' && !optional) throw new Error(`Fontsource has no ${family} ${weight} ${style}`); })); } } } await Promise.all(jobs).catch((error) => { kitFail(error); throw error; }); return added; } /** Runs `build` (a buildDocument or buildBundle call) and checks the faces * the pages use. A regular face missing from FONTS is loaded with a warning; * bold and italic variants are loaded when the family ships them. Then the * measurement caches are cleared and the build runs again. */ async function buildWithFonts(build, text = '') { const tried = new Set(); for (let round = 0; round < 3; round++) { kitStatus('Laying out…'); await new Promise(requestAnimationFrame); // let the status paint first const result = await Promise.resolve().then(build).catch((error) => { kitFail(error); throw error; }); const wanted = { base: {}, variants: {} }; for (const { font, base } of [result].flat().flatMap(fontStringsOf)) { const { family, weight, style } = parseFont(font); const key = `${family}|${weight}|${style}`; if (tried.has(key) || hasFace(family, weight, style)) continue; tried.add(key); (wanted[base ? 'base' : 'variants'][family] ??= []).push(`${weight}${style === 'italic' ? 'i' : ''}`); } if (Object.keys(wanted.base).length) { console.warn(`[cookbook] FONTS does not list ${JSON.stringify(wanted.base)}: loading them.`); } const added = await loadFonts(wanted.base, text) + await loadFonts(wanted.variants, text, { optional: true }); if (added === 0) return result; clearMeasurementCache(); } throw new Error('The fonts did not settle after three builds.'); } /** Every font string of the layout. `base` marks a block's own face; its * bold, italic and bold-italic variants are listed whether or not used. */ function fontStringsOf(doc) { const found = new Map(); const walk = (node) => { if (!node || typeof node !== 'object') return; if (Array.isArray(node)) { node.forEach(walk); return; } for (const [key, value] of Object.entries(node)) { if (typeof value === 'string' && /fontString$/i.test(key)) { found.set(value, found.get(value) || key === 'fontString'); } else if (value && typeof value === 'object') walk(value); } }; walk(doc.pages); walk(doc.blocks); return [...found].map(([font, base]) => ({ font, base })); } /** '700 37.5px Open Sans' / 'italic 400 13px "Source Serif 4"' → { family, weight, style }. * A string with no weight ('95.8px Young Serif', from a design text) is 400. */ function parseFont(font) { const m = /^(?:(italic|oblique)\s+)?(?:small-caps\s+)?(?:(\d+|bold|normal)\s+)?[\d.]+px\s+(.+)$/.exec(font.trim()); if (!m) throw new Error(`Unexpected font string: ${font}`); const weight = m[2] === 'bold' ? 700 : !m[2] || m[2] === 'normal' ? 400 : Number(m[2]); return { family: m[3].replace(/^["']|["']$/g, ''), weight, style: m[1] ? 'italic' : 'normal' }; } /** True when a loaded FontFace covers exactly this family, weight and style * (document.fonts.check() is also true for families nobody declared). */ function hasFace(family, weight, style) { for (const face of document.fonts) { if (face.status !== 'loaded' || face.style !== style) continue; if (face.family.replace(/^["']|["']$/g, '') !== family) continue; const [low, high = low] = face.weight.split(' ').map(Number); if (weight >= low && weight <= high) return true; } return false; } /** Fontsource's id for a family: 'Source Serif 4' → 'source-serif-4'. */ function fontsourceId(family) { return family.toLowerCase().replace(/\s+/g, '-'); } /** The weights and styles a family ships ({ weights: [400, 700], styles: ['normal', 'italic'] }), or null. */ function fontsourceMeta(family) { fontsourceMeta.cache ??= new Map(); const id = fontsourceId(family); if (!fontsourceMeta.cache.has(id)) { fontsourceMeta.cache.set(id, fetch(`https://api.fontsource.org/v1/fonts/${id}`) .then((res) => (res.ok ? res.json() : null), () => null)); } return fontsourceMeta.cache.get(id); } // ─── Kit · viewer v1 ── the same in every recipe · postext.dev/cookbook ─────── /** Shows the pages as facing spreads on a dark desk: the first page is a * recto on its own, then verso | recto pairs, as in a bound book. Pages * are painted when they scroll near the screen. */ function showPages(docs, { title, width = 460 } = {}) { const root = viewer(title); const pages = [docs].flat().flatMap((doc) => doc.pages.map((page) => ({ doc, page, n: (doc.pageIndexOffset ?? 0) + page.index }))); const spreads = []; let verso = null; for (const p of pages) { if (p.n % 2 === 1) { if (verso) spreads.push([verso, null]); verso = p; } else { spreads.push([verso, p]); verso = null; } } if (verso) spreads.push([verso, null]); const density = Math.min(window.devicePixelRatio || 1, 2); showPages.painter?.disconnect(); const painter = new IntersectionObserver((entries) => { for (const { isIntersecting, target } of entries) { if (!isIntersecting) continue; painter.unobserve(target); const { doc, page } = target.postext; renderPageToCanvas(page, doc, target, { scale: (width * density) / page.width }); } }, { rootMargin: '800px' }); showPages.painter = painter; root.replaceChildren(...spreads.map((pair) => { const spread = document.createElement('div'); spread.className = 'pt-spread'; for (const p of pair) { const figure = document.createElement('figure'); if (p) { const label = p.page.pageLabel || String(p.n + 1); const canvas = document.createElement('canvas'); canvas.postext = p; canvas.style.aspectRatio = `${p.page.width} / ${p.page.height}`; canvas.setAttribute('role', 'img'); canvas.setAttribute('aria-label', `Page ${label}`); const folio = document.createElement('figcaption'); folio.textContent = label; figure.append(canvas, folio); painter.observe(canvas); } else figure.className = 'pt-blank'; spread.append(figure); } return spread; })); kitStatus(`${pages.length} ${pages.length === 1 ? 'page' : 'pages'}`); document.documentElement.dataset.postext = 'ready'; return pages.length; } /** The desk, the bar and the error reporting, created once. */ function viewer(title) { if (!document.getElementById('pt-kit')) { document.head.insertAdjacentHTML('beforeend', `<style id="pt-kit"> :root { color-scheme: dark; } body { margin: 0; background: #0e1014; color: #b9bcc4; font: 13px/1.45 system-ui, sans-serif; } #pt-bar { position: sticky; top: 0; z-index: 1; display: flex; flex-wrap: wrap; align-items: center; gap: 6px 16px; padding: 10px 16px; background: rgb(14 16 20 / .92); backdrop-filter: blur(6px); border-bottom: 1px solid #23262d; } #pt-bar strong { color: #f4f1ea; font-weight: 600; } #pt-actions { display: flex; gap: 12px; margin-left: auto; } #pt-actions a, #pt-actions button { color: #d8a21a; font: inherit; background: none; border: 0; padding: 0; cursor: pointer; } #pages { display: grid; justify-items: center; gap: 48px; padding: 32px 16px 72px; } .pt-spread { display: flex; } .pt-spread figure { margin: 0; width: min(460px, 44vw); } .pt-spread canvas { display: block; width: 100%; background: #fff; box-shadow: 0 1px 2px rgb(0 0 0 / .5), 0 22px 44px -16px rgb(0 0 0 / .8); } .pt-spread figure:first-child canvas { box-shadow: inset -14px 0 14px -14px rgb(0 0 0 / .18), 0 1px 2px rgb(0 0 0 / .5), 0 22px 44px -16px rgb(0 0 0 / .8); } .pt-spread figcaption { margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; font: 600 10px/1 system-ui, sans-serif; letter-spacing: .18em; text-transform: uppercase; color: #6c7079; } .pt-blank { visibility: hidden; } @media (max-width: 760px) { .pt-spread { flex-direction: column; gap: 32px; } .pt-spread figure { width: min(460px, 92vw); } .pt-blank { display: none; } } </style>`); document.body.insertAdjacentHTML('afterbegin', '<header id="pt-bar"><strong id="pt-title"></strong><span id="pt-status" role="status"></span><span id="pt-actions"></span></header>'); document.getElementById('pt-title').textContent = document.title || 'Postext'; addEventListener('error', (event) => kitFail(event.error ?? event.message)); addEventListener('unhandledrejection', (event) => kitFail(event.reason)); } if (title) document.getElementById('pt-title').textContent = title; return document.getElementById('pages') ?? document.body.appendChild(Object.assign(document.createElement('main'), { id: 'pages' })); } function kitStatus(text) { viewer(); document.getElementById('pt-status').textContent = text; } function kitFail(error) { document.documentElement.dataset.postext = 'error'; kitStatus(`Error: ${error?.message ?? error}`); } // ─── Kit · pdf v1 ── the same in every recipe that exports a PDF ────────────── /** postext-pdf embeds TrueType bytes. Fetch the Fontsource file the screen * used, snapping to a weight the family ships and falling back to upright * when it has no italic: the PDF asks for every face a block could use. */ async function fontsourceProvider(family, weight, style) { const id = fontsourceId(family); const meta = await fontsourceMeta(family); const weights = meta?.weights?.length ? meta.weights : [400, 700]; const w = weights.reduce((a, b) => (Math.abs(b - weight) < Math.abs(a - weight) ? b : a)); const s = style === 'italic' && meta && !meta.styles.includes('italic') ? 'normal' : style; const res = await fetch(`https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/@fontsource/${id}@5/files/${id}-latin-${w}-${s}.woff2`); if (!res.ok) throw new Error(`Fontsource has no ${family} ${w} ${s} (${res.status})`); return decompressWoff2(new Uint8Array(await res.arrayBuffer())); } /** A "Build the PDF" button in the bar. Once built: "Open the PDF" (a new * tab, since CodePen's preview frame cannot show PDFs) and a download link. */ function offerPdf(makePdf, filename) { viewer(); const button = Object.assign(document.createElement('button'), { type: 'button', textContent: 'Build the PDF' }); button.dataset.postextPdf = filename; button.addEventListener('click', async () => { button.disabled = true; button.textContent = 'Building the PDF…'; try { const bytes = await makePdf(); const url = URL.createObjectURL(new Blob([bytes], { type: 'application/pdf' })); const size = `${Math.max(1, Math.round(bytes.length / 1024))} KB`; button.replaceWith( Object.assign(document.createElement('a'), { href: url, target: '_blank', rel: 'noopener', textContent: 'Open the PDF ↗' }), Object.assign(document.createElement('a'), { href: url, download: filename, textContent: `Download ${filename} · ${size}` })); } catch (error) { button.disabled = false; button.textContent = 'Build the PDF'; kitFail(error); } }); document.getElementById('pt-actions').append(button); } // ─── /Kit ───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
The composed script.js runs as it is: paste it into any page’s module script, or open the recipe on CodePen. Recipe folder on GitHub ↗ (opens in a new tab)
Variations
#Run the list on after the essay
A journal that sets Works Cited after the last paragraph, without a new page, drops the break from the heading style.
- headingStyles: [{ id: 'works-cited', breakBefore: { enabled: true, parity: 'any' } }],
+ headingStyles: [{ id: 'works-cited', breakBefore: { enabled: false } }],#Cite in Chicago author-date
The same essay in Chicago puts the year after the author, "(Brooks 1947, 165)", and the list follows suit.
- style: 'modern-language-association', // MLA 9th edition, author-page
+ style: 'chicago-author-date',Pitfalls
Pitfall
Any headings object switches off the H1 page break
By default an H1 breaks to a recto (always-odd), but passing any headings object resets that default, so chapters run on and span: 'page' does nothing. Restate headings.levels[0].breakBefore: { enabled: true, parity } in every config. Chapters that open on a recto →
Pitfall
Load every face before layout
Layout measures text with the faces the browser has loaded and caches the widths, so a face that arrives after the first build leaves wrong line breaks and a PDF that no longer matches the screen. Load every weight and style first, and call clearMeasurementCache() before rebuilding when one arrives late. Fonts before layout →
Pitfall
A swapped palette misses design elements and the reference colour
postext 1.4.1 reads colorPalette into the text styles (body, headings, lists, captions, tables, boxes) but not into the elements of headers, footers, openers and part pages, nor into bodyText.referenceColor: they keep the hex written beside their paletteId. When you swap the palette, for a dark screen edition or a retint, rewrite every linked colour from colorPalette before the build. Semantic colour palette →
Pitfall
Only 8 locales hyphenate, by exact code
Hyphenation ships for en-us, es, fr, de, it, pt, ca and nl, matched exactly: 'es-ES' or any other language silently falls back to American English. Hyphenation and document language →
Pitfall
A config is cached by identity: build a fresh object
The engine caches resolved configs by object identity, so changing a config in place and building again reuses the old result. Build a fresh object for every build, which is why a recipe's config is a factory: config(). Pages on a canvas →
- A narrative citation without a page,
@stillinger1974 records, prints the name with a second space after it in postext 1.12.1. Cite such a work in brackets at the end of the clause, as this essay does, or give a page. - citeproc-js prints titles as the data give them. MLA uses title case for English titles, so write them that way in the references.
Credits
- Recipe
- Ignacio Ferro
- Text
- Quotations from “Ode on a Grecian Urn” (1820) · John Keats · public domain
- Quotations from two letters of 1817, in Letters of John Keats to His Family and Friends, ed. Sidney Colvin (1925) · John Keats · public domain
- Fonts
- Spectral (SIL OFL 1.1) · Spectral SC (SIL OFL 1.1)
Edit this write-up ↗ (opens in a new tab)Recipe folder on GitHub ↗ (opens in a new tab)


