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PerlPoint-Converters-1.0204
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NAME

pp2html - PerlPoint to HTML converter

VERSION

This man page describes $Revision: 1.21 $ from PerlPoint::Converters Package 1.0204

SYNOPSIS

pp2html --help
pp2html [@options_file] [options] slide_text

DESCRIPTION

pp2html creates a set of HTML files for a foilset based on a simple textfile slide_text. Due to its formatting features and the capability of creating navigation, table of contents and index pages, pp2html is also a suitable tool for writing online documentation.

A slide is normally made up by a header and a number of bullet items:

=Example of a Slide

* Contains a head line ("Example of a Slide")

* Should have some bullet items

* May have footer and/or header section with company logo 
  and navigation links

The intention of pp2html is to simply write down your headers and bullet items just like above in an ASCII file and then automatically create a set of HTML files ready for presentation.

The main features of pp2html are:

  • Simple ASCII input file for your text

  • Optional templates for header and footer of the slides (e.g. for company logo, hyperlinks for navigation, copyright note etc.)

  • Rudimentary formatting capabilities

  • Creation of a contents page with links to all slides

  • Creation of an index page with links to all keywords which have been indexed

  • Optional layout as HTML frame set (header frame, contents frame, footer frame and eventually index frame). The footer frame has always the same position on the screen.

  • The index frame may use a TreeApplet which provides convenient access to all pages.

    For more information see: http://www.naturallyj.com

    The PerlPoint-Converters package contains an older version of the tree applet. The new release of the tree applet is not yet supported.

The following documentation describes in detail the syntax of a pp2html input file and all options of pp2html.

SYNTAX of PerlPoint Files

The format for the pp2html input files is called PerlPoint-Format. For a detailed and possibly more up-to-date description of the PerlPoint language please refer to the excellent POD documentation of the PerlPoint::Parser Module by Jochen Stenzel.

There are the following main components of an input file for pp2html:

  • Comments

  • Headers

  • Bullet Items

  • Numbered Lists

  • Definition Lists

  • Paragraphs

  • Blocks

  • Verbatim Blocks

Comments

Lines which start with a double slash // are treated as comments. They are not included in the slides.

Headers

Headers are lines which start with one or more = signs. The number of = signs determines the level of the header:

=This is a level 1 header

==This is a level 2 header

It is necessary to put a blank line after the header. If you use headers of different levels then you get a structured document with chapter numbering e.g.

1 First chapter
1.1 Subsection 1
1.2 Subsection 2
2 Second chapter

The chapter numbers depend on the position of the page and the level of its header.

Bullet Items and Numbered Lists

A bullet item is indicated by an asterisk * in the first column.

* Item one is very long
and continued on the next line

* Item 2

* Item Three

If you use hash signs # instead of asterisks, the list will autmatically be a numbered list:

# First

# Second

Note: It is important to put a blank line after each bullet item, otherwise the text on the following line belongs to the same bullet.

Paragraphs

Text which is not indented is treated as a normal paragraph. In HTML terminology this is a <P> ... </P> container.

Blocks

Text which is indented by one ore more blanks will be put in a colored box. The text will be treated as pre formatted. Special formatting tags (see below) are still applied.

The HTML representation is a <TABLE> with colored background and the text itself is put into a <PRE> ... </PRE> container.

Verbatim Blocks

Verbatim Blocks are copied as is into the HTML page. Special formatting tags (see below) are not applied. (Only HTML meta characters are escaped, for example the "<" or ">" sign.) This means that Verbatim Blocks are suitable for code examples: Just cut and paste your piece of code into the pp2html input file and put the verbatim box markers around:

<< END_OF_BOX
sub verbatim_text
{
  for example some piece of code;
}
END_OF_BOX

The block begins with `<<MARK' and ends with the text MARK on a separate line. This is like a here document in perl or in a C-shell.

Alternatively you can use the \INCLUDE tag with the example option:

\INCLUDE{type=example file="filename"}

Special Formatting Tags

Some rudimentary formatting is also supported by pp2html. It is similar syntax as in POD:

\C<this is code>
\B<bold face>
\I<italic>
\E<lt>  \E<gt>
\E<uml>
\U<underline>
\SUP<superscript>
\SUB<subscript>

Note that the tags are preceeded by a backslash. This is necessary because the PerlPoint format knows several tags that are longer than one character. The general form of PerlPoint tags is

\TAGNAME{param1=value1 param2=value2 ...}<tag body>

The parameter list is optional and enclosed in curly braces.

It is possible to switch the box color from case to case with the following tags:

\BOXCOLORS{bg=yellow}

\BOXCOLORS{fg=blue}

or in short: \BOXCOLORS{bg=yellow fg=blue}

Color and text size

There is a special tag

\F{color=value size=value face=typeface}<text>

which allows to set color and size and the typeface for a text. This is translated to the HTML <FONT> tag.

In order to use internal hyperlinks there must be targets for those links. A link target or anchor is defined by the following tag:

\A{name="target_name"}

An internal link to this target is written in the form:

\PAGEREF{name=target_name}
\SECTIONREF{name=target_name}

The first link is replaced with the page number of the page which contains the target. The second link is replaced with the page header of the corresponding page.

NOTE: Each page automatically gets an anchor with the page header as target name. For this reason it is possible to use SECTIONREF tags with the name=page_title parameter to get inernal links to each page.

External hyperlinks have the form:

\L{url=http://wwwpixel.de}<http//www.pixel.de>

Index and Cross References

A cross reference to an internal target has the form:

\XREF{name=target_name}<text of cross ref>

Index entries are defined by

\X<word>
\X{mode=index_only}<text, special>

The latter form creates an index entry which appears only in the index. The "word" from the the first form appears in the current text and in the index.

Note: The index_only form is useful, for example, if you want to have a word from a heading included in the index. The index tag is not allowed inside of a heading.

OPTIONS

--activeContents

PerlPoint sources can embed Perl code which is evaluated while the source is parsed. For reasons of security this feature is deactivated by default. Set this option to activate it. You can use --safeOpcode to fine tune which operations shall be permitted.

--cache

parsing of one and the same document several times can be accelerated by activating the PerlPoint parser cache by this option. The performance boost depends on your document structure.

Cache files are written besides the source and named ".<source file>.ppcache".

It can be useful to (temporarily) deactivate the cache to get correct line numbers in parser error messages (currently numbers cannot always reported correctly with activated cache because of a special perl behaviour).

--cacheCleanup

PerlPoint parser cache files grow (with every modified version of a source parsed) because they store expressions for every parsed variant of a paragraph. This is usually uncritical but you may wish to clean up the cache occasionally. Use this option to perform the task (or remove the cache file manually).

--safeOpcode=opcode

If active contents is enabled (--activeContents), Perl code embedded into the translated PerlPoint sources will be evaluated. To keep security this is done via an object of class Safe which restricts code to permitted operations. By this option you can declare which opcode (or opcode tag) is permitted. Please see the Safe and Opcode manual pages for further details. (These modules come with perl.)

Pass ALL to allow everything.

This option can be used multiply.

You may want to store these options in default option files, see below for details.

For the examples used in ppdoc.pp you should use

--safeOpcode=:filesys_open --safeOpcode=:still_to_be_decided --safeOpcode=:browse
--set=flag

This option allows you to pass certain settings - of your choice - to active contents (like conditions) where it can be accessed via the $PerlPoint hash reference. For example, your PerlPoint code could contain a condition like

? $PerlPoint->{userSettings}{special}

Special part.

? 1

The special part enclosed by the two conditions would then be processed only if you call pp2html with

--set special

and if active contents was enabled by -active, of course.

This option can be used multiply.

--trans_table=filename

The --trans_table option specifies a the filename of a tanslation table for non ASCII characters like german Umlaute etc. The characters are specifed as octal numbers as in the folowing example:

#Translation Table for German Umlaute (this is the default)

\334 &Uuml;
\374 &uuml;

\326 &Ouml;
\366 &ouml;

\304 &Auml;
\344 &auml;

\337 &szlig;
--filter=regexp

This specifies a regular expression regexp which should match all allowed languages for EMBEDed code. The expression is evaluated caseinsensitively.

Example: --filter="perl|html"

--nocopyright

suppresses the copyright message;

--noinfo

supresses runtime informations;

--nowarn

supresses warnings;

--quiet

a shortcut for "--nocopyright --noinfo --nowarn": all non critical runtime messages are suppressed;

--count_only

If this option is set, only a counter will indicate that slides are created. Otherwise for all slides the full header is printed while generating the slides.

--box_color=color
--boxtext_color=color

Set background and forground colors for block paragraphs

--bgcolor=color
--fgcolor=color
--idx_bgcolor=color
--idx_fgcolor=color
--toc_bgcolor=color
--toc_fgcolor=color
--top_bgcolor=color
--top_fgcolor=color
--bot_bgcolor=color
--bot_fgcolor=color
--linkcolor=color
--alinkcolor=color
--vlinkcolor=color

Set the background and foreground color for all HTML pages. The idx_ and toc_ options are for the index page and table of contents respectively. The last three options set the colors for hyperlinks, active links and followed links. The linkcolor options can also be prefixed with top, bot, toc and idx for example --toc_linkcolor white.

--back_image
--toc_back_image
--idx_back_image
--top_back_image
--bot_back_image

Set background image for nomal slides, table of contents, index, top frame or bottom frame.

--top_template=filename
--top_idx_template=filename
--top_toc_template=filename
--bottom_template=filename
--bottom_idx_template=filename
--bottom_toc_template=filename
--nav_template=filename
--nav_top_template=filename
--nav_bottom_template=filename

Filenames for template files (in HTML format). The bottom template is appended to each slide. Can be used to create footers with navigation, copyright note etc. The top template is inserted at the top of each slide.

The _idx_ templates are used for the index slide and the _toc_ templates are used for the table of contents slide.

The nav_top and nav_bottom templates are included in all pages on top, just below the top_template and at the bottom just before the bottom_template. If the --nav_template option is set, the nav_template will be used on top and at the bottom unless you specify --nav_top_template or --nav_bottom_template. The latter both will overwrite the --nav_template option.

NOTE: Templates should not contain <HTML>, <HEAD>, <TITLE> or <BODY> tags. These tags are always written by pp2html. There is, however, one exception: If you use the --frame_set option without java script navigation (see below), then the top and bottom HTML templates should be directly included in the frame set template and should be full HTML files with HEAD and BODY lines.

The following keywords and "function calls" are substituted with corresponding values when the templates are included. (Everything should be completed in the line of its beginning, there's no multiline support built in yet.)

TITLE               text specified by --title option
URL_HERE            hyperlink to the current page
URL_NEXT            hyperlink to next page
TXT_NEXT            header of next page
URL_PREV            hyperlink to previous page
TXT_PREV            header of previous page
URL_FIRST           hyperlink to first page
TXT_FIRST           header of first page
URL_LAST            hyperlink to last page
TXT_LAST            header of last page
URL_UP              hyperlink to upper page
TXT_UP              header of upper page
URL_DOWN            hyperlink to subsection page
TXT_DOWN            header of subsection page
URL_CONTENTS        hyperlink to contents page
TXT_CONTENTS        text specified by --contents_header
URL_INDEX           hyperlink to index page
TXT_INDEX           text specified by --index_header
LABEL_NEXT          label text for "next" link
LABEL_PREV          label text for "previous" link
LABEL_CONTENTS      label text for "contents" link
LABEL_INDEX         label text for "index" link
PAGE                page or chapter number
PAGE_CNT            number of pages
PAGE_PATH           a clickable "path" of parent slides intended for navigation in deeply nested documents
TOP_LEFT_TXT        text for left side in top templates, see --top_left_txt
TOP_RIGHT_TXT       text for right side in top templates, see --top_right_txt
TOP_MIDDLE_TXT      text for middle in top templates, see --top_middle_txt
BOT_LEFT_TXT        text for left side in bottom templates, see --bot_left_txt
BOT_RIGHT_TXT       text for right side in bottom templates, see --bot_right_txt
BOT_MIDDLE_TXT      text for middle in bottom templates, see --bot_middle_txt
LOGO_IMAGE_FILENAME text for the logo image filename in template files, 
                    see --logo_image_filename
START_ADDRESS       start address URL as specified --startaddress
DATE(<format>)      date (and/or time) in the specified C<POSIX::strftime> format,
                    (e.g. "DATE(%s)")
VAR(<variable>)     insert the current value of the PerlPoint variable $<variable>
                    (e.g. "VAR(version)")
OPT(<option>, <part>) optionally insert <part> into the template, depending on whether
                    C<pp2html> option <option> is set or not. The inserted part might contain
                    further keywords. Make sure everything is places in I<one> line, and there
                    is no additional closing paranthesis. Example: "OPT(insert_date, DATE(%c))".
--top_left_txt
--top_right_txt
--top_middle_txt
--bot_left_txt
--bot_right_txt
--bot_middle_txt
--logo_image_filename

These texts will be used to replace the corresponding keywords in template files which are used in the slides. See for example the orange_slides style.

--boxtext_bold=ON
--boxtext_bold=OFF

Text in colored textboxes will be printed bold or normal.

--box_border=width

Set the border width of block paragraphs.

--box_width=width

Set the width of block paragraphs. This assures that all colored boxes have the same width.

Example: --box_width="80%"

--bullet=filename

Filename of a GIF or JPEG image which is used for the bullets in bullet lists. This option can be used more than once. In this case the first occurance is used for top level lists, the second occurance for second level lists etc.

NOTE: The filename must be given as an absolute pathname or relative to the directory where the pp2html program is started (i. e. relative to the directory where the PerlPoint input file resides). When the --style option is used, the filename must be specified relative to the directory where the style is defined. Normally all bullet images for a style reside in the style directory.

--bullets_align_middle

If this option is set, bullets are aligend to MIDDLE. Otherwise they are aligned to TOP. This options may yield better results for presentation slides with large font size.

--block_indent=m

Indent each block by m levels (i. e. put m <UL> </UL> containers around the block This can be used to shift the block boxes to the right. Looks better if a block paragraph occurs within a bullet list.

--center_headers

Page Headers are centered. Default is no centering.

--contents_header=text

Heading for contents page. Default is Contents

--frame_set=filename

filename for frame set template. This activates the frame set generation.

--frame_start=filename

filename of the startfile for the frame set. The frame_set template is copied to this file in the slide_dir directory.

--contents_target

This is used as the target frame in all hyperlinks to the table of contents. Useful for example if you have a frame set without an Index frame. In this case it might be usefull to set the --contents_target option to "Data".

--contents_table_width=m

Specifies the width of the table used for the table of contents (unless the tree applet is uses). A value of 0 suppresses the width option in the HTML table.

--contents_css_id_index=<id>

Enforces pp2html to assign the passed CSS id to the TOC table on the index page.

If this option is unset or set to an empty string, no id will be assigned.

--contents_css_id_start=<id>

Enforces pp2html to assign the passed CSS id to the TOC table on the start page.

If this option is unset or set to an empty string, no id will be assigned.

--index_bot=n
--index_dat=n
--index_top=n

Indices of the bottom, top and index frames within the frame set. Used for java script navigation procedure.

--index_header=text

Heading for index page. Default is Index

--no_index

Do not create an index

--java_script_navigation=value

value=1: on, value=0: off. If java_script_navigation is on and frame sets are generated then for each page a separate top and bottom page is created which is used in the top and bottom frames of the frame set. If java_script_navigation is off, then only one top template and one bottom template will be used for all pages. (In this case there should be no place holders for PAGE etc. in theses templates ... and they should be complete HTML Files.)

NOTE: This option is mainly used in combination with the --tree_applet option because it is not possible to use the tree applet with javascript navigation (the tree applet cannot call URLs which contain javascript function calls).

--java_script_controls=value

If this option is used, additional javascript code is included in each header of the slides. This makes it possible to use keyboard keys and left mouse button to navigate through the slides. value=1 turns this option on and value=0 turns it off. Default is off.

The following table shows the keys which can be used for navigation:

Key             |  Action
----------------+----------------------------
 Button 1 click |  go to next slide
 n              |  go to next slide
 p              |  go to previous slide
 s              |  go to start slide
 i              |  go to index slide
--linear_mode

This option influences the behaviour of PREV and NEXT links. In linear mode all pages form a linear sequence which can be traversed by means of the PREV and NEXT links. When this option is not set then the PREV and NEXT links work only on the same level. For example is it possible to traverse the sequence 2.1.1, 2.1.2, 2.1.3, 2.1.4 with PREV and NEXT links but the first section has no PREV link and the last one has no NEXT link. In such a constellation the UP and DOWN links may be used to change the level and go the the next higher section or step down to a subsection.

--num_headers
--nonum_headers

All page headers are preceeded/not preceeded by the chapter number (e.g. 2.2.3) which is determined by the position of the page and the level of its header. The --nonum_headers overwrites a previous num_headers option which allows to overwrite options from predefined styles.

--trailing_point

If this option is set, all numbers in the page headlines will will get a trailing point (e.g. 1. 2.3. instead of 1 and 2.3). The default is no trailing points.

--no_contents_indent
--no_contents_bullets

These two options influence the appearance of the table of contents. The first one prevents the indentation and the second one avoids bullets in front of each entry.

--contents_indent=m

Indent table of contents by m levels (i. e. put m <UL> </UL> containers around the table of contents.

--slide_dir=directory
--target_dir=directory

Directory in which the HTML files are to be created.

--slide_prefix=text

Prefix for all HTML files. Default is "Slide".

--slide_suffix=text

Suffix for all HTML files. Default is "htm".

--slide_md5

This option specifies, that all filenames should have the form <slide_prefix><md5_checksum>.<slide_suffix> e. g. slide85b9a93686f5416d2f85964a33fad95b.htm. The md5_checksum is calculated from the slide header. This can be usful, if there are many changes in your document (addition/removal of slides) and you use hyperlinks to pages of your document from within other documents.

NOTE: This feature is still experimental.

--reverse_order

This options has the effect that the slides are numbered in reverse order. If there are <m> slides (beside the contents slide) the normal naming would be slide0000.htm, slide0001.htm ... slide000<m>.htm. With the --reverse_order option the naming is slide000<m>.htm, ... slide0002.htm, slide0001.htm. The contents slide is still slide0000.htm.

--title=text

Text which is substituted for the TITLE keyword in template files.

--tree_applet

Activate usage of TreeApplet

--tree_app_width=m
--tree_app_height=m

Width and height of the tree applet area.

--tree_base

Codebase option for the tree applet. Default is ./

--style=style_name
--style_dir=style_dirname

Using pre-defined styles. Styles are pre-defined collections of templates and configuration files which are stored in a directory whose name is the name of this style. Several of such styles can be placed in a style directory (collection of styles).

With --style_dir=style_dirname you can specify one or more style directories (the option can be used more than once). All specified style directories are searched for the style which is given by the --style option.

Examples of styles are delivered with the PerlPoint-Converters distribution.

--style_sheet=style_sheet_name

This option is still experimental. It allows to specifiy a style sheet (.css) which will be referenced in HTML <head> tags in all slides. It is not well tested and the settings in the style sheet may conflict with some layout tricks used by pp2html.

--image_dir=dirname

This is the name of the image directory in the target area. All images from the style directory and from the PerlPoint source are copied to this location.

--mv2targetdir

If this option is set, all images mentioned in \IMAGE tags are moved to the image directory, i.e. they are removed from the source directory.

--start_page=filename

The default for this option is "index.htm". The table of contents slide or the frame set start page is copied to this filename unless the --start_page option is set to the empty string. This is useful for web pages because most browsers automatically open the "index.htm" if it exists. For example, if you have installed your document or presentation at "http://somewhere.net/Example", a web browser will automatically open the first page of your document if the browser is directed to this URL.

--trace [<level>]

activates traces of the specified level. You may use the environment variable SCRIPTDEBUG alternatively (but an option overwrites environment settings). The following levels are defined (use the numeric values) - if a description sounds cryptic to you, just ignore the setting:

zero (0)

same as omitting the option: all traces are suppressed.

one (1)

paragraph detection,

two (2)

lexer traces,

four (4)

parsing,

eight (8)

semantic actions embedded into parsing,

sixteen (16)

active contents,

thirtytwo (32)

backend traces.

Using different levels may cause unexpected results.

Several levels are combined by addition.

# activate lexer and parser traces
--trace 6
--help

Print this manual page.

--version

Print version inforamtion and exit.

FILES

Template files for header and footer section.

Configuration file $HOME/.pp2html

ENVIRONMENT

The following environment variables have influence on the program:

SCRIPTDEBUG

may be set to a numeric value to activate certain trace levels. You can use option -trace alternatively (note that a used option overwrites an environment setting). The several levels are described with this option.

TMP
TEMP

TMP or TEMP are used to specify a temporary directory (needed for a temporary help file). If none of these variables is set, "/tmp" will be used.

NOTES

The PerlPoint format was initially designed by Tom Christiansen. Tom used a simple syntax which was inspired by POD and a simple script which created HTML files from an ASCII file.

SEE ALSO

pp2latex

SUPPORT

A PerlPoint mailing list is set up to discuss usage, ideas, bugs, suggestions and translator development. To subscribe, please send an empty message to perlpoint-subscribe@perl.org.

If you prefer, you can contact me via lorenz.domke@gmx.de as well.

AUTHOR

Lorenz Domke (lorenz.domke@gmx.de), Copyright (C) 2005. All rights reserved.