You start Passepartout by typing pptout & in your terminal window. You are then presented with an empty document window (no document has been created).
You can get a list of command line options accepted by Passepartout with pptout --help.
To create an empty document, select New ... from the File menu. In the dialog that will appear, you can choose between creating a document from an existing template (any Passepartout document can be used as a template) or by specifying the paper 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 File menu.
To add a page to the document, select Insert Before ... or Insert After ... from the Page menu. If the document was created from 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 hand corner of the main window.
You can add an image to a page by selecting Insert Image ... from the Edit 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 Insert Text Frame ... from the Edit menu. The text shown in a text frame is read from an XML file, but the text frame is not connected directly to the file. Instead, 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 splits the text into parts and puts them in the appropriate frames.
Adding text frames to a document is a two-step process:
Create a text stream and connect it to an existing XML file in the Streams dialog, which can be opened from the Streams item on the View menu. You may also specify an XSLT stylesheet , which is used to translate the XML file into a format that xml2ps can understand (see Creating the XML files).
Create a number of text frames and link them to the text stream in the Object Properties dialog, available through the Properties item on the View menu (see Manipulating objects).
Any object can be moved or 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 View 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 object. The properties that are unique to certain kinds of object are displayed in separate tabs.
An object 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 CTRL-button 1) and selecting Group from the Arrange submenu in the Edit 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. The text and images imported into the document are not saved as a part of the document.
Note: Passepartout does not (yet) ask before writing over existing files! There is also no warning before closing an unsaved file.
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 a file. 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).
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