Feature Requests for Passepartout (0.8.0 and beyond)

[Onno Tasler]

Since this is my first post to this list, first of all: Hello everyone!

It might be not the best start, but there are several things I would like to see for Passepartout:

- a function to mathematically calculate the best text width for a given combination of font family and size, for one and two row calculation. I know that the LaTeX package KOMA script offers this, perhaps it could be included in Passepartout as well. (The documentation for KOMA script is available at http://dante.ctan.org/CTAN/macros/latex/contrib/koma-script/komascr.html in German and English)

- an improved documentation, especially the PDF does not meet typographic requirements, for example it does not use the correct “quotes” but simply "'s, also it simply shows three points ... instead of one "…" sign. Also, it does not cover all important parts, and extended in-program-help would be welcome, too. Last but not least, change the name from "user-guide" to "passepartout-user-guide" - it is not the only user guide around and I might download two at the same time.

- I agree with the text editor, even tough at least I would find it sufficient to open an external program.

- There are no back links from the user guide and the maillist archiv to the main homepage. Please change this. The user guide and the FAQ are somehow broken, other than the rest of the homepage they have no margin and are thus difficult to read.

- A to do list / roadmap, or some other kind of overview which parts need help. I am not able to invest a lot of time right now, but if I knew what's up, I might spend at least a little.

- A "mission statement" of some kind, that explains, what this program achieves to be (except for the current "being a dtp program") and for what kind of uses it is intended and /why/ (not how) it is different from other dtp programs like Scribus and LaTeX.
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[Alexandre Prokoudine]

On 9/12/07, Onno Tasler wrote:

> - a function to mathematically calculate the best text width...

May I hope that you meant paragraph (not just line) optimization using
tracking and hyphenation? :)

> - A "mission statement" of some kind,

+1024 :)

Alexandre
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[Onno Tasler]

Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:

> On 9/12/07, Onno Tasler wrote:
>
>> - a function to mathematically calculate the best text width...
>
> May I hope that you meant paragraph (not just line) optimization using
> tracking and hyphenation? :)

Ah, no. It seems I did not describe that very well. Paragraph optimization
using tracking and hyphenation are done by microtype, not KOMAscript. I
meant a tool to aid me in designing the page's layout, a help to figure
out proportions and the like. I will try giving an example:

I want to create a 3 column layout using Bookman Old Style as font size 9.
This tool will tell me that each column should be 8 cm width to assure
good readability. If I instead used Times New Roman as font, again size 9,
the tool woudld have told me each column should be 7.5 cm width (and
thus the margins bigger), because the Times New Roman is smaller than the
Bookman Old Style.

Or, rather than telling me the columns needs to be this to that long, it
will create the columns with the appropriate length and allows me to put
them whereever they fit. It is almost like a wizard to create text frames.
(If it could tell me the golden ratio / other proportion for a given page
size, that would be a bonus)

with friendly regards, Onno

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[Sven Herzberg-2]

Onno Tasler wrote:

> Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:
>
>  
>> On 9/12/07, Onno Tasler wrote:
>>
>>    
>>> - a function to mathematically calculate the best text width...
>>>      
>> May I hope that you meant paragraph (not just line) optimization using
>> tracking and hyphenation? :)
>>    
>
> Ah, no. It seems I did not describe that very well. Paragraph optimization
> using tracking and hyphenation are done by microtype, not KOMAscript. I
> meant a tool to aid me in designing the page's layout, a help to figure
> out proportions and the like. I will try giving an example:
>
> I want to create a 3 column layout using Bookman Old Style as font size 9.
> This tool will tell me that each column should be 8 cm width to assure
> good readability. If I instead used Times New Roman as font, again size 9,
> the tool woudld have told me each column should be 7.5 cm width (and
> thus the margins bigger), because the Times New Roman is smaller than the
> Bookman Old Style.
>
> Or, rather than telling me the columns needs to be this to that long, it
> will create the columns with the appropriate length and allows me to put
> them whereever they fit. It is almost like a wizard to create text frames.
> (If it could tell me the golden ratio / other proportion for a given page
> size, that would be a bonus)
>  

Please file a bug, so this request doesn't get lost in the mailing list
archive nirvana.
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/

Regards,
  Sven
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