Passepartout Frequently Asked Questions
$Id: faq.xml,v 1.10 2004/12/02 21:41:52 foo Exp $
General
What does Passepartout
mean?
An early draft name for Passepartout was
Framer
since it deals with frames. (We like
FrameMaker a lot, not that it has much in common with
Passepartout.) This was a very dull name, so we changed it. A
passepartout is a kind of cardboard frame you put around
watercolour paintings.
How do I pronounce Passepartout
?
Like pus par two
. Use a rolled French R if you
like. The important thing is not pronouncing it like
trout
.
Are you guys French?
Non. I mean no.
Installation
Is there a public CVS repository?
Yes there is. Run the following command to check out a
fresh copy: CVS_RSH=ssh cvs -d
anoncvs@anoncvs.stacken.kth.se:/pptout checkout
passepartout
Note that you will have to build your own
configure script using
automake and
autoconf; see
DEVNOTES for details.
I have a problem with libxml++
Passepartout 0.4 and later uses the stable libxml++ 1.0
API. Versions prior to 0.4 will only be guaranteed to build
with exactly the version or versions of
libxml++ that are specified in the
INSTALL file. No version have yet been
built against the libxml++ 2.6 branch.
Configure says libxml++ is unknown to pkg-config
Pkg-config can't find libxml++, because it doesn't know
where to look. Try adding the path to the file
libxml++-1.0.pc to the environment variable
PKG_CONFIG_PATH. If libxml++ is installed in
/usr/local/ then the path is
/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig/.
Using Passepartout
How do I edit text in Passepartout?
You don't. You write the text in XML
format in your favourite text editor, then you import the text
into Passepartout. Read the User's Guide for more detailed
instructions.
If I import text into Passepartout, does that mean I can't
change it afterwards?
Not at all. Text is only imported by reference. If you edit
and save changes to the XML file,
Passepartout will notice the change and update the display.
Does Passepartout support colored text?
Not yet. Is does support grayscale text though. The
<font> and
<para> elements accept the
gray attribute which can be a number
between 0.0 and 1.0.
Can I print documents from the command line?
Not now, but in the future, we hope to make it possible to run
Passepartout from a script.
Can I use xml2ps as a stand-alone typesetter?
Yes. Regrettably, xml2ps is poorly documented. The command
xml2ps -p 400x600 -p 200x500 < foo.xml >
foo.ps prints the content of
foo.xml on two pages (400 x 600 and 200 x
500 points respectively) and saves the result in
foo.ps. The file
foo.xml must be in the xml2ps
DTD. If you want to use another
DTD, you will have to filter it through
a stylesheet with xsltproc.
xml2ps does not support images.
Is there no TrueType support?
Yes there is, as of version 0.6.