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Creating a New Style

Question:

How can I create a new style?

Answer:

The easiest method is to copy all files from an exsiting style directory to a new style directory and then modify the files.

Assume that all your pp2html styles are located in your style collection ~/my_styles/:


  % cd    # cd to your home directory
  % ls -F ./my_styles
  big_blue/
  orange_slides/

Create a new directory for the new style:


  % mkdir fancy_colors

Choose a style which is best suited to be a base for the new style and copy all files from the old style to the new style, e. g.:


  % cp orange_slides/* fancy_colors

Rename the files:


  % cd fancy_colors
  % rename -s/orange_slides/fancy_colors/ *orange_slides*

  (Yes, this is my own rename script which is quite comfortable :-))

Edit the fancy_colors.cfg file and the template files according to your needs.

Discussion:

A pp2html style is a set of template and options files contained in a separate directory:

The name of the options file is fixed: Must be the style name followed by .cfg. The names of the other files can be chosen at will but it is recommended to use a strict naming convention. This makes it easy to rename the files if you want to create a new style based on an existing style.

The template files should make use of keywords like TOP_RGIHT_TXT or LABEL_NEXT. Default values for these keywords can be set in the options file with the corresponding options, e.g.: --label_next="Next"

When you use this style, you can always overwrite these settings by using a local options file in your document directory:


  pp2html @local.cfg --style_dir ~/my_styles \
          --style fancy_colors  input.pp

In local.cfg you may write:


  --label_next="Weiter"
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