7. Documenting The Show

When executed with option --export format, pointless is run in a non interactive mode, quickly stepping through the slideshow in order to make screenshots of each slide.

Screenshots are placed in the export directory. The export directory is defined implicitly as ./<format> or explicitly by option --exportdir.

Pointless also exports the relevant information about these screenshots.

When issued as --export raw, a .export file is generated next to the screenshots. This file contains all necessary information for the incorporation (by scripts or other means) of the screenshots into material in any format for any media.

When issued as --export html, however, pointless will merge the information about the screenshots into a number of files, based on templates and keyword substitution.

The templatefiles, which may all be specified either in the EXPORT section of the pointlessrc file or as command line options, are

Templatefile  Description 
templatefile The template for the files used for each screenshot. Mandatory.
firsttemplatefile The template for the file used for the first screenshot. Optional. If not present, templatefile will be used.
lasttemplatefile The template for the file used for the last screenshot. Optional. If not present, templatefile will be used.
indexfile The template for the file used for an index on the screenshots. Optional. If not present, no index file will be produced.

In the templates, a number of keywords are available. They will be substituted by values described below. They are all prefixed and postfixed by %% (e.g. as %%width%%).

In the optional indexfile, two lines may contain the keyword %%repeat%%. Lines between these two are used as template for a material repeated (and concatenated) for each screendump. These lines are referred to as the repeated part. Lines before and after these two are refereed to as the static index part.

Keywords available for substitution in the templatefiles are listed below. ``t'' indicates availability in the template files, ``r'' availability in the repeated part of the index template ans ``s'' availability in the static part.

Keyword  Availability  Description 
shotnumber t,r The number of the slide
filename t,r The name of the file exported for the slide
shotname t The name of the file containing the screenshot
width t The width of the screenshot
height t The height of the screenshot
thumbshotname r The name of the file containing the screenshot (small)
thumbwidth r The width of the screenshot (small)
thumbheight r The height of the screenshot (small)
prevfilename t The name of the file exported for the previous slide
prevshotname t The name of the file containing the screenshot for the previous slide (small format)
prevwidth t The width of the previous screenshot (small)
prevheight t The height of the previous screenshot (small)
nextfilename t The name of the file exported for the next slide
nextshotname t The name of the file containing the screenshot for the next slide (small format)
nextwidth t The width of the next screenshot (small)
nextheight t The height of the next screenshot (small)
indexfilename t,r The name of the file containing the index on the screenshots
showname t,r,s The name of the slideshow
totalnumber t,r,s The total number of screenshots

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