Main Features
This is really just a wishlist for now, as
there is no code.
glayout is intended to be a page layout program for the X Window System,
working within the Gnome desktop.
You would use glayout to design brochures, posters, newsletters,
books or reports. It's not a word processor, though; you might want to
create your files in another program, save them as XML, and then import them.
For the first version that's probably what you'll have to do.
Layout
Layout is automatic with manual intervention; it's designed to
do the right thing wherever possible, by applying one or more
rules in succession until a set of constraints are met.
Advanced users can edit the rules and constraints. A scripting
language interface might also be provided.
- Run-arounds
- where text flows around an image, piece of text etc.
- Balanced Columns
- where the text is split so two columns are the same
height, adjusting paragraph spacing,
word spaces or line spacing (option)
if necessary
- Parallel Columns
- E.g. margin notes or translations, where text in
one column has to lign up with text in another
- Footnotes and Marginalia
- Automatic placement of footnotes on the correct page
(this is hard)
- Figure Placement
- Automatic placement of figures on the first referenced
page (with manual override)
- Cross references and Index
- automatic index and TOC generation from
hints in the text; automatic section/page numbers
in cross references
- Master Pages
- Text flows into text boxes which are linked into sequences.
You can design master pages, so that when a new page is needed, the
right page design is used; you can say that a particular style or
XML element uses a particular master page, too. If you prefer, you
can ignore master pages.
- Mistress Pages
- These are used to discipline bad printers.
Text
- Kerning
- Adjusting the spcacing between glyph pairs such as VA or f),
either systematically throughout all uses of a font, or on a one-off basis
- Tracking
- addingor subtracting a fixed amount of space between each pair
of glyphs (interacts with lgatures!)
- Ligatures
- Replacement of a sequence of characters with a glyp or glyph sequence,
e.g. (f, f, l) with an "ffl" ligature
- Small Caps
- Automatic small caps based on regexp? Or at the very least both
[A-Z] -> [A-Z], [a-z] -> sc, and the reverse, using a smallcap/expert
font if available.
Justification
- Left
- Aligned to left margin, right margin ragged; this is the default
for LtoR (Western) text.
- Right
- Aligned to right margin, left margin ragged; this is the default
for RtoL text (e.g. Hebrew).
- Both
- Adjust spaces between words, letter-spacing, word spacing or
use alternate glyphs in order to keep text aligned to both margins.
- Centre
- Center
- Extra horizontal space is distributed either side of each lines,
so that the lines are centred between the margins.
- Flush Zone
- In conjunction with any of the above justification modes,
if a line falls within the flush zone (e.g. is at least 85% of the
width available) it is spread to fill the line, provided that doing
so does not increase the word spacing beyond the maximum permitted value.
- Justification rules
These are applied in order to each line, after line-breaking.
The default list is
- expand spaces;
- glyph substitution;
- unkerning;
- spelling changes, if permitted;
- letterspacing;
- set line short
Output
- PostScript
- Used by all high-end typesetters and printers.
- Separations
- Separate C M Y and K PostScript files for four-colour
printing; maybe hexachrome?
- Trapping and Undercolour Removal
- Needed for quality printing on four-colour presses
with ink
Papers
- XML Data Structure
- How the XML might be read, stored and manipulated.
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