[reportlab-users] Pythonpoint

[Andy Robinson]

> When I run the pythonpoint.xml demo, several of the slides run 
> off the right 
> edge of the page.  On page 3, "XML Notation", both the top and 
> bottom paragraph 
> run off the right edge.
> 
> Further, all of the paragraphs seem to have their first line 
> indented by one space.  Is this a known issue?
It is now :-)  I see we introduced this a few months ago by
mistake, each paragraph is getting a 'bullet string' of ''
instead of None, and it allows a bit of space after the bullet.
You can get the fix from CVS or CVSweb, or wait for current.zip
in the morning.   reportlab/tools/pythonpoint/stdparser.py

> Does the Acrobat reader have enough hooks to allow one to map a 
> mouse click 
> into the "show next page" action, making it even closer to PowerPoint?

In theory, yes, but we have not exposed it.  The PDF Spec defines
numerous actions and it's just a matter of finding the right
dictionary actions.  Personally I find a click on the 'page down' key 
just as easy as a click on the mouse so I never tried ;-)

Also, see yesterday's announcement on the auto-advance, which needs
no clicks but goes wrong when the audience asks a question :-)

> Finally, is there a good, lightweight XML-aware editor that would 
> ease the creation of these slides?

I don't know about free ones but I did use XML Spy at one point.
This basically looks at the DTD and ensures all your edits are
valid, offering drop-down completion of tags and attributes.
Does anyone know a free validating editor?


It seems a lot of people seem to use a preprocessor to define macros,
so they can transform lists of bullets or indented text lines 
into xml with great regularity.  Not the same approach, but can 
save a lot of typing...possibilities include 
preppy (www.reportlab.com/ftp/preppy.zip) or Empy, which Dinu Gherman
mentioned here recently.

Best Regards,

Andy Robinson