INTRO

Welcome!

This package provides modules to write PerlPoint
translator software. The PerlPoint format, initially
designed by *Tom Christiansen*, is intended to provide
a simple and portable way to generate slides without
the need of a proprietary product. Slides can be prepared
in a text editor of your choice, generated on any platform
where you find perl, and presented by any browser which can
render the chosen output format.

To sum it up, Perl Point Software takes a text
and transforms it into slides written in a certain
document description language. This is, by tradition,
usually HTML, but you may decide to use another
target format like XML, SGML, TeX or whatever you want.

Well, this sounds fine, but how to write a translator
which transforms ASCII into the output format of your
choice? Thats what this package is for. It provides a
general converter (perlpoint) which can be easily extended
by own formatter modules to produce what you want.

Additionally, the included base framework allows to write
complete converters like perlpoint itself, or like the already
existing pp2sdf, pp2html, pp2latex etc.



INSTALLATION

As usual: unpack and run "make test" and
"make install distclean". This will install
both the module set (various PerlPoint::...
modules) and the translator pp2sdf.

If you are using CPAN.pm or CPANPLUS, try to
install Bundle::PerlPoint to get all PerlPoint
related packages at once.


DOCUMENTATION

Documentation for translator *authors* is provided
in the modules in POD format (see PerlPoint::Parser,
PerlPoint::Backend and PerlPoint::Constants).
Additionally, there is a PerlPoint document
"writing-converters.pp" in the doc subdirectory
which may be converted by your preferred converter.

Base documentation for translator *users* is provided
in PerlPoint (see the doc subdirectory). This basic
documentation is intended as a startup help to translator
authors to write specific documentation. It describes
general aspects and can be directly included into
translator specific PerlPoint documents by \INCLUDE.


KNOWN TRANSLATOR SOFTWARE

Translators using this package are *pp2html* and
*pp2latex* by Lorenz Domke. A *pp2sdf* software comes
with this package itself, see the demo directory.

As mentioned above, all PerlPoint related packages
including Lorenz' converters can be installed via
CPAN.pm as Bundle::PerlPoint.


DEMO TRANSLATORS

The demo directory contains several converters on base
of this package. Except for pp2sdf which serves as a
reference implementation, these are just illustrations
intended to show how the package can be used. So they
are not fully functional but really worth a look.

To run pp2ppresenter, XML::Generator needs to be installed.

If someone wants to take over the demos to make them
full featured converters provided in an own CPAN package,
feel free to do so. Just let me know.


SUPPPORT

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 perl@jochen-stenzel.de
as well.


CREDITS

Thanks to Tom Christiansen for the idea and first implementation
of PerlPoint! And special thanks for his permission to use this
name for our new implementation.

Thanks to Lorenz Domke who begun to extend the initial software.
I think I was the "main tester and user" besides himself. Finally
I started to think about various output formats and a parser and
he agreed to transform pp2html to the new model. I appreciate
his cowork in language design and testing. In fact, this project
grew up in two parts: the module package and first translators
Lorenz wrote on its base (pp2html, pp2latex). Great teamwork!

Thanks to Stephen Riehm who shared his ideas of extensions for
the original software with us. The final language was basically
designed by a team of Lorenz, him and me.

Thanks to Alex Sigel, Norbert Gruener and Jeffrey S. Haemer who
became our first users outside the team and helped us by their
usage reports and suggestions. Special thanks to Alex for
propagating the toolkit and his help to publish the software!

Thanks to Johan Vromans and Mark Overmeer for the PerlPoint
brainstorming meeting at the 3rd German Workshop. Various ideas
came up there and are still making their way into the software.

Thanks to Benjamin Holzmann for XML::Generator and his very fast
help and patches.


AUTHOR

Copyright (c) Jochen Stenzel (perl@jochen-stenzel.de), 1999-2003.
All rights reserved.

This module is free software, you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the terms of the Artistic License distributed with Perl version
5.003 or (at your option) any later version. Please refer to the
Artistic License that came with your Perl distribution for more
details.

The Artistic License should have been included in your distribution of
Perl. It resides in the file named "Artistic" at the top-level of the
Perl source tree (where Perl was downloaded/unpacked - ask your
system administrator if you dont know where this is).  Alternatively,
the current version of the Artistic License distributed with Perl can
be viewed on-line on the World-Wide Web (WWW) from the following URL:
http://www.perl.com/perl/misc/Artistic.html.


DISCLAIMER

This software is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
is provided "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, either expressed or
implied, INCLUDING, without limitation, the implied warranties of
MERCHANTABILITY and FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

The ENTIRE RISK as to the quality and performance of the software
IS WITH YOU (the holder of the software).  Should the software prove
defective, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR
CORRECTION.

IN NO EVENT WILL ANY COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR ANY OTHER PARTY WHO MAY CREATE,
MODIFY, OR DISTRIBUTE THE SOFTWARE BE LIABLE OR RESPONSIBLE TO YOU OR TO
ANY OTHER ENTITY FOR ANY KIND OF DAMAGES (no matter how awful - not even
if they arise from known or unknown flaws in the software).

Please refer to the Artistic License that came with your Perl
distribution for more details.