I have been think­ing about us­ing rst2pdf to cre­ate pre­sen­ta­tion­s. I fin­ished ex­pos­ing PDF tran­si­tions to­day, and that part works nice­ly.

Still need­ed:

• Some sort of "page dec­o­ra­­tion" fea­­ture.

• Hand­out sup­­port? I think this would work nice­­ly with some sort of "con­di­­tion­al" di­rec­­tive. I need to think about it some more.

I in­tend to have that done for next fri­day, and re­lease then.

First a huge an­nounce­men­t: I will not re­lease any­thing to­mor­row. For the first time in 6 week­s, no fri­day re­lease from me!

Now, let's see what I'm plan­ning.

1. I will be at Lati­noWare 2008 speak­ing about PyQt. The usu­al free beer of­fer: if you men­­tion this blog, I will buy you 1 (one) not very good beer. Be­ing in Brazil, that's prob­a­bly a Brah­­ma.

2. rst2pdf de­vel­op­­ment is slow­ing down. The easy stuff is all done. There are some things I can do, though:

   • Ex­­­pose tran­si­­­tions to the writ­er (good for pre­sen­­­ta­­­tion­s)

   • "Back­­­­­ground" forms (a­­­gain, for pre­sen­­­ta­­­tion­s)

   • A mini-lan­guage ex­­­pos­ing the can­­­vas, so there is a use­­­ful "raw" mod­­­e.

   • Us­ing svglib in­­­stead of uni­­­con­ver­­­tor to han­­­dle SVG (but keep uni­­­con­ver­­­tor for oth­­­er vec­­­tor for­­­mat­s)

   • Re­­­do­ing list­s, which have a shaky code and bad lay­out

   • Fix half a dozen bugs

   • Make it work more like a unix app when in unix (re­spect en­vi­ron­­­ment vars, for ex­am­­­ple)

   How­ev­er, I am tak­ing a lit­­tle time off from it, and go­ing to try re­­viv­ing oth­­er pro­jec­t­s. Fo­­cus­ing in rst2pdf for two months did won­ders for it. Let's see if it can be re­­peat­ed!

3. Try some more code golf­ing. I helped Nu­bis from PyAr reach the low­est­-s­­core of 74 in the grid chal­lenge. This is re­al­­ly fun stuff.

4. I need more mon­ey. We have spent lots in ... plumb­ing. Yup. Two years of sav­ings spent on that. So, I need mon­ey. If you read this blog and want to make me hap­py, get me free­lance work. It can be sysad­min stuff, it can be pro­­gram­ming, it can be babysit­t­ing. I am good at all three things. Con­­tact me. I'm easy to find, and I am cheap­­(ish).

5. No, I am not starv­ing. No, I am not in mon­ey prob­lem­s. Yes, my com­­pa­ny is do­ing very well, but it's an in­­vest­­men­t, not a cash cow (yet).

Well, what the ti­tle says. Get it at the usu­al places. No, it does­n't re­quire ac­tu­al La­TeX. Just Mat­plotlib.

If I man­age to make it work well: Math!

Here's how it look­s:

It does not re­quire TeX. It is not an im­age. It does re­quire ex­ter­nal soft­ware, and it does re­quire you to write TeX syn­tax.

If you are a re­port­lab user: this is a platy­pus flow­able.

As usu­al, it's not me that's do­ing the heavy lift­ing. I am just good at us­ing oth­er tool­s.

With a lit­tle luck, it should be us­able this fri­day.

I an­nounced it on all oth­er places ex­cept here: rst2pdf 0.8.1 is out. What's new?

• Com­­plex head­­ers and foot­ers

• Op­­tion­al in­­­line links

• Wor­­daxe 0.2.6 sup­­port

• Many bug­­fix­es

Get it at the usu­al place