HavenPoint v0.1a1 (developers' release)

1. Introduction
2. Requirements
3. More Info
4. Download

Introduction

HavenPoint is an open source application that generates PDF slide presentations from XML source files. It is based on the PythonPoint demo application included with ReportLab, available from

I wrote HavenPoint because I tried PythonPoint and found that it produced excellent results but had some frustrating limitations:

• The XML DTD was very awkward from an authoring perspective, requiring a great deal of redundant markup.
• PythonPoint did not make use of PDF forms, perhaps because ReportLab didn't support them when it was developed.
• PythonPoint requires that an output file name be specified in the source file. Moreover, the underlying ReportLab library will output only to a file. This makes it difficult to specify a file name on the command line, and impossible to deliver a dynamic PDF document over the web (for example) without first saving it to a temporary file.
• PythonPoint, buried in ReportLab's demos directory, hasn't gotten enough attention! Linux users, in particular, are likely to be interested in PythonPoint/HavenPoint, since Linux is short on quality presentation tools (yes, I am aware of Star Office, and those who are satisfied with its presentation app are entitled to their opinions).

The fact that I am publishing this product under a new name does not mean that I intend to start a separate development track. I would be happy to see my work incorporated into the standard ReportLab distribution. However, since my changes have never (to my knowledge) been discussed among ReportLab developers, and I suspect some of them represent philosophical differences between me and the original authors, I thought the HavenPoint name would emphasize that this is an "unofficial" variant application.

Requirements

In order to use HavenPoint, you must have on your system:

HavenPoint should work on any platform; so far it has been tested on:

     Debian GNU/Linux v2.2, with
     + Python 1.5.2
     + ReportLab 1.0.6
    

More Info

For a brief introduction to HavenPoint, read:

• HavenPoint: A Cross-platform Presentation Tool
  

This document assumes that you are familiar with PythonPoint. To view it, Windows and Mac users will need the free Adobe Acrobat Reader . Linux users may use Acrobat Reader, or GV or GhostView, one of which is included with most Linux distributions.

Download

• havenpoint-0.1a1.tar.gz
  GZIPped TAR archive [277kB]
• hvp01a1.zip
  ZIP archive [303kB]