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<TITLE>PPresenter; Beginners; Styles</TITLE>

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    <TD ALIGN=center><H1>Selecting a Style</H1></TD></TR>
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<A HREF=../../index.html>PPresenter</A><BR>
<A HREF=../../manual.html>Manual</A><BR>
<A HREF=../index.html>Tutorials</A><BR>
<A HREF=index.html>Beginners</A><BR>
<P>
<A HREF=define.html>Subject</A><BR>
<A HREF=design.html>Design</A><BR>
<A HREF=create.html>Creation</A><BR>
<B>Styles</B><BR>
<A HREF=slide.html>Adding Slides</A><BR>
<A HREF=change.html>Changing&nbsp;defaults</A><BR>
<A HREF=timing.html>Timing</A><BR>
<A HREF=tagging.html>Tagging</A><BR>
<A HREF=dday.html>DDay</A><BR>

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Next thing to consider is selecting a <EM>style</EM>.  In PPresenter, you can
design styles; like in LaTeX or other text-processors, the style describes
<EM>how</EM> to display the slides and you are concerned <EM>what</EM> is
displayed.
<P>
This approach of PPresenter differs a lot from many modern text-processors and
presentation programs, which are refered to as WYSIWYG: "What You See Is
What You Get".
The PPresenter and WYSIWYG approaches both have their own advantages and
problems, and this is not the place to debate about that.
Of course, my preference (and I hope yours too, otherwise you're in for
a hard time) is PPresenter's approach.

<H3>Styles</H3>

A <A HREF=../../style/index.html>style</A> describes how to display a
<A HREF=../../slide/index.html>slide</A>.
A style is based a number of style-elements, each responsible for a part of
the total style:
<DL>
<DT><A HREF=../../decoration/index.html>Decorations</A>:
<DD>This style-element defines background and foreground colors and images.
    There are different defaults for beamers and LCD-projection devices.
    We can change this later, so skip this for now.
    <P>
<DT><A HREF=../../fontset/index.html>Fontsets</A>:
<DD>The most complicated (and still to be improved) elements of style, because
    using the right fonts is important however very system dependent.  Large,
    nice fonts do not come easy on most systems.  Do not bother about the
    font right now: this is easy to change later.
    <P>
<DT><A HREF=../../template/index.html>Templates</A>:
<DD>They describe the layout of a slide has to have.  You will have to know
    which are available from the first slide you write.  Each template
    divides the screen in named parts.
    <P>
<DT><A HREF=../../formatter/index.html>Formatters</A>:
<DD>When you add text for a slide, you will feel te need for some layout.
    You can create your own way of specifying text, but may consider to learn
    how to use the default <A HREF=../../formatter/markup.html>markup
    formatter</A>, which has a lot in common with HTML.
    <P>
    You can not change the formatter later, unless you are willing to
    rewrite the content of all slides.   However, you may change the formatter
    you use per slide.
    <P>
<DT><A HREF=../../dynamic/index.html>dynamics</A>:
<DD>When a slide is shown, you may want make steps (PPresenter calls them
    <EM>phases</EM>) and have moving text.  Not of primary consideration, and
    use it sparsely (or not at all).
</UL>
<P>
If your company or organization prescribes a style, you can specify it with
the <CODE>new</CODE> call.  In most cases you will use the default style: you
do not need to specify anything.
<PRE>
   use PPresenter;
   my $show = PPresenter-&gt;<A HREF=../../show/new.html>new</A>
      ( -name    =&gt; 'my first show'
      , -style   =&gt; 'PPresenter::Style::MyOwn'
      );
</PRE>
In this example, you see that I also added an option <CODE>-name</CODE>, to
give the show a name which is shown on the title-bar.  I'll tell more about
options in the next chapter.
<P>
In the example above, I specify a style which is described in a file
called <CODE>PPresenter/<WBR>Style/<WBR>MyOwn.pm</CODE>.  The path to the
file is relative to the current directory, or to any of the default
library directories of Perl.

<P>
Next: <A HREF=slide.html>Adding Slides</A>.
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Portable Presenter is written and maintained by
<A HREF=http://mark.overmeer.net>Mark Overmeer</A>.
Copyright (C) 2000-2002, Free Software Foundation FSF.


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