[TYPO3-doc] Using ReST/LaTeX/PDF for the "What's New slides"

[Xavier Perseguers]

Hi Michael,

> I am in the middle of investigating options to use ReST as a foundation
> for the upcoming "TYPO3 CMS 6.2 - What's New" slides [1].

Nice!

> Martin Bless already provided me with a heap of information, tips and
> suggestions over the last three days (many thanks for that!). I managed
> to set up the complete rendering workflow on a fresh, clean Debian 7.1
> Wheezy server and I am able to convert ReST->HTML and ReST->LaTeX->PDF.
> Fantastic docu on our Wiki [2], by the way :-)

Good if you managed to do it manually. If you have a TYPO3 website
somewhere (either local or not), you may be interested into using
EXT:sphinx which highly ease the install and maintenance (for instance
when RestTools are updated, LaTeX template for TYPO3 branding or TS
hightlighting). But all in all, if you have managed to install
everything from scratch, that's perfect of course.

> The main goal of the "What's New" slides is PDF format, so I have not
> worried about any HTML layouts/designs yet but have learnt LaTeX. The
> outcome of a few hours work with LaTeX, two books and uncountable Google
> searches is pretty impressive: a nice looking, TYPO3-branded demo
> presentation, based on the existing "What's New" slides:
> 
> 20130820-typo3-demo-slides.pdf - http://db.tt/sb4VqCxm

A few years old but maybe interesting anyway:

http://xavier.perseguers.ch/fileadmin/download/LaTeX/guidelines.pdf

sources, ... :
http://xavier.perseguers.ch/en/tutorials/latex/presentations.html


> The file size of the .tex source is only 7k, plus two, three images! I
> am aware of some minor issues and I am sure, when we create the "real"
> presentation, some more issues/challenges will come up.
> 
> Now I would like to find out how ReST->LaTeX work... in order to judge
> if this is practical and if our approach (creating the "What's New"
> slides with ReST) would work and really simplifies our work or slows us
> down.
> 
> @Xavier: what do you recommend I should look at now? How does the
> current ReST->LaTeX->PDF worfklow work for "standard" documents? Slides
> are very, very different (I use the "Beamer" class)... do you see any
> problems with that?

No, beamer is actually what I would recommend as well (you can find a
comparison of the various solutions with pros/cons in link to
guidelines.pdf above.

> In my opinion, it would be fantastic, if we manage to extend the
> existing ReST rendering workflow (and the RestTools) by "typo3slides"
> and I am happy to contribute to this.

Would be fun :)

I'm not sure however what's the best approach. One solution would be to
start with

.. raw::

commands in your ReStructuredText source to issue the various
beamer-related LaTeX environments and instructions, just to see if "it
works". Then, as docs.typo3.org does not allow "raw" anyway and as it is
not user-friendly, we should investigate if creating additional commands
for Sphinx to create the various "slides" would be ok.

To be honest, I fear it will be quite some work and will very hard to
come "close" to the power of beamer using an intermediate language. When
I created my various presentations, I often had to do a few fancy stuff
and this required me to write either LaTeX commands or even TeX ones.

Another possible pitfall will be to ensure LaTeX builder from Sphinx
creates "compatible" code for beamer, without unneeded or problematic
markup (when it comes to low-level LaTeX instructions, having exactly
what is expected, even with proper comma or space is sometimes required,
see [1] - sorry French only but code is English - for an example) and if
we have to change/enhance the LaTeX builder this may be quite some work.

But the topic is interesting! So count me in for supporting you in one
way or the other.

Cheers
Xavier


[1]
http://xavier.perseguers.ch/en/tutorials/latex/tableaux/triangle-de-pascal.html

-- 
Xavier Perseguers
Release Manager TYPO3 4.6

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