Passepartout 0.0 User's Guide

You start Passepartout by typing pptout & in your terminal window. You are then presented with an empty document window (no document is opened).

You can get a list of options accepted by Passepartout with pptout --help.

To create an empty document, select New ... from the File menu. In the Document properties dialog you can choose between creating a document from an existing template (any Passepartout document can be used as a template) or by specifying the document format. You can also specify the page number the first page in the document should have. These settings can be changed at a later point by selecting Properties ... from the Doc menu. Press OK and the new document will appear in the main window.

To add a page to the document, select New Before ... or New After ... from the Page menu. If you have specified a template, you will be asked to select a template page.

You can change the active page with the page selector in the lower right corner of the main window.

You can add an image to a page by selecting Import Image... from the Object menu. Passepartout accepts EPS, PNG, RAS, BMP, XPM, PNM, TIF, JPG and GIF files.

A text frame can be added to a page by selecting New Text Frame ... from the Object menu. A text frame shows the text defined in an XML file, but the text frame is not connected directly to the file. Each text frame is connected to a text stream, which in turn is connected to an XML file. The reason for this is that a text may span several frames, possibly on several pages. All frames that are meant to be part of of the same text are connected to the same text stream. The stream then splits the text into parts and puts them in the appropriate frames.

Adding text frames to a document is a two-step process:

It is also possible to begin by creating the frames and connecting them to the stream later.

An image or text frame can be moved by clicking and dragging it. Text frames and EPS images can also be resized using the mouse. The properties of an object can also be manipulated explicitly in the Object Properties dialog which is accessible through the Properties item on the Object menu. When an object is selected, its properties can be edited in the dialog. In order for changes to take effect you have to push the Apply button. Not all properties apply to all types of frames. The properties that are unique to certain kinds of frame are displayed in separate tabs.

A frame can be locked, preventing you from accidentally moving or resizing it with the mouse. Locked frames have a gray border.

You can also choose whether text should flow around a frame or not.

Several frames may be combined into a group by selecting more than one frame (using ALT-button1, unless your window manager steals that particular combination) and selecting Group from the Arrange submenu in the Object menu. Frames can also be moved up or down relative to other frames using the items in the Arrange submenu.

Opening and saving files works much like in most other applications. Note: Passepartout does not (yet) ask before writing over existing files! The text and images imported into the document are not saved as a part of the document.

Passepartout can print PostScript or EPS files. (EPS files may only contain one page.) The file can be piped to a printing command, such as lpr, or saved to the filesystem. Select Print ... from the File menu. There is also a Print Preview item that will start an external PostScript viewer (if one has been defined).

The typesetting engine of Passepartout is called xml2ps and it is a stand-alone program^[2]. It has its own DTD^[3]. XSLT stylesheets can be used to translate any XML file to the format that xml2ps will accept.

There are two basic approaches to writing text for Passepartout:

The advantage with the former approach is that you get superior control over the result, while the latter method is more suitable when authoring longer texts. Stylesheets for XHTML and DocBook are supplied as examples. This document is in fact formatted in DocBook itself. A good exercise for the reader is to modify these examples to look different. Do you want to change the font from Times to New Century Schoolbook? Do you want an empty line between paragraphs? Do you want all text to be centered? Make it happen!

Lengths may be specified in points ("12pt", "-0.3pt") or relative to the font size ("2em", "-0.3em").

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<block-container font-family="Bookman-Light" font-size="12pt">

<para font-family="AvantGarde-Demi" font-size="36.3pt" 
      align="center" margin-bottom="20pt">
This is a centered headline in Avant Garde demi-bold 36.3 points
</para>

<para align="justify">
This is text in Bookman Light 12 points. 
<font font-size="50%">This is text in Bookman Light 6 points.</font>
Some words may be typeset in an 
<font font-family="Bookman-LightItalic">italic</font>
typeface. The word "hyphen<bp/>ated" may be hyphen<bp/>ated.
</para>

<para margin-left="12pt" align="left" line-height="1.5">
This is a left-justified indented paragraph with a line height of 18 points.
<font underline="1">This sentence is underlined.</font> In this sentence, there is an unnecessary <leader width="5em"/> space.
</para>

</block-container>