Intro to converters

The transformation from a PerlPoint source into a document is done by programs called "PerlPoint converters". A number of these scripts is available on CPAN and at the projects site at Sourceforge:

• pp2html is the traditional main converter. It produces fancy HTML pages and is highly configurable. This converter is part of the CPAN distribution PerlPoint::Converters .
• pp2latex produces LaTeX. This is claimed to be in alpha state but is fairly stable. It comes as part of PerlPoint::Converters as well.
• pp2sdf generates SDF, a document format superseeding POD, by Ian Clathworthy. SDF is out of development, but it's very stable. The SDF processor sdf can produce a lot of other formats, namely PDF, PostScript, POD and manpages. So SDF is typically used as an intermediate format. pp2sdf is part of PerlPoint::Package .

As you can see, typically there is one converter for every target format. This was our approach up to PerlPoint::Package 0.39, and these tools are furtherly provided and fully supported. Additionally, PerlPoint::Package 0.40 introduced an extended design which makes it easy to have one converter for many target formats. In this design, format capabilities are added by formatter plugins, which from a users point of view come in the form of Perl module distributions.

In the extended design, the all in one converter is called perlpoint. Currently the following formatters are available:

• PerlPoint::Generator::SDF::Default , generating SDF. In fact the default converter for SDF reproduces all the capabilities of pp2sdf. It comes with PerlPoint::Package .
• PerlPoint::Generator::XML::Default . The base XML formatter transformes the PerlPoint source document into XML according to an own DTD. Tag names can be adapted, and the resulting DTD can be produced as well. Part of PerlPoint::Generator::XML .
• PerlPoint::Generator::XML::AxPoint . Generates XML for the AxPoint presenter by Matt Seargeant. Part of PerlPoint::Generator::AxPoint .
• PerlPoint::Generator::XML::XHTML . Produces an XHTML document, supporting CSS. The document is written to a single page. Part of PerlPoint::Generator::XHTML .
• PerlPoint::Generator::XML::XHTML::Paged . Produces XHTML documents supporting CSS, one page per chapter. Part of PerlPoint::Generator::XHTML .

The list of formatters will hopefully grow. A formatter to the Open Office Presenter software ("Impress") may follow, as it uses XML as well.

Please note that nobody is limited to the converters in this list. In both concepts, anyone in need of another converter can write it on his own, as there is an open framework provided. In the formatter concept, is is even possible to modify just a certain part of an existing converter, to get the behaviour you prefer. We will talk about that in the advanced sections.

For now, we will have a look how to use these programs to get a document from our source. The following sections describe both the established and stable "one format, one converter" concept, and the new formatter concept which is still in beta state. Feel free to use the concept of your choice.