Help!

Laidout doesn't do what I want! What's up with that?

The huge development team, currently consisting of one (1) person, me, Tom Lechner, can only type so fast! You are more than welcome to post critiques on the Laidout mailing list, or get involved with development. Also, you might consult the current Features page, and also the development Roadmap.

How can I bypass the new document dialog?

You can pass in a few arguments from the command line such as the following. All the ones with the '-n' option create a new document according to your comma separated specifications. If you have spaces in your spec, you should put quotes around it. You can specify the type of imposition (singles, doublesidedsingles, booklet, or net), the paper size (letter, legal, ...), the number of pages, and whether it is supposed to be portrait or landscape:

> laidout --help
> laidout --version
> laidout file1.doc file2.doc
> laidout -n 'letter, 2 pages'
> laidout -n 'net, a4, landscape, 40'
> laidout -n 'legal, landscape, booklet, 44'

default_template blah.laidout

> laidout --template blah.laidout

Selecting objects seems really screwy. Is this human error, or a design flaw?

It is a temporary design flaw, owing to my desire to pump out Version 0.06. Selecting multiple objects is rather badly implemented for cases where the objects exist on different pages or layers. This will, that is to say should, be corrected by 0.07. Multiple object selecting should be seen as a quick means to an end at the moment.

I click print, and it says "To file:" or "By command:". Isn't that terribly limiting?

I know it's rather silly to have a 'desktop publishing program' and not have a decent way to send things to the printer, like printing with a certain default DPI and other settings, but what do you want for a 'Version 0.06'? There are many plans for it by version 0.1. If you have Cups, you can "print by command" with "lp" as the command. Laidout creates a temporary postscript file, and sends that to the command. If you print to a file, you could do the same thing manually like this:

lp output.ps

You can preview how it will be sent to the printer with gv:

gv output.ps

However, I have noticed that when I try to use gv to view files that contain imported EPS files, it seems to hang when trying to display the last page. If, however, I add a blank final page, then it doesn't hang. I have no idea why this happens.

It is useful to consult the man pages for lp and lpoptions. You can set up different settings in your ~/.lpoptions file to print at different resolutions, and on different paper. It took me forever to figure that out when trying to print things from Inkscape decently. So for instance if you have the proper line in your .lpoptions file, then you could use it in the "print by command":

lp -d theprinter/matte360dpi

Why is there such an obnoxious flicker in the windows?

Laidout currently depends on the X Double Buffer Extension being available. If it is, then the windows don't behave like that.

What is all that stuff scrolling by on the terminal when I run the program? It slows things down a lot!

That stuff is debugging info written to stdout. The easiest way to get that stuff to go away is to run the program like this:

laidout > /dev/null

The harder way to get that stuff to go away is to remeber to run make hidegarbage before compiling Laidout. Even before that, you must do the same thing to the Laxkit before compiling it. The precompiled deb package has done this already.

When I choose Net, it's always a dodecahedron. Wtf?

You can save one of those nets, and look at the file. Simply modify the file to have the proper elements, and then load it back in. Bit of a pain, but it works. An eventual feature of Laidout is to have a simple sort of polyhedron unwrapper to speed this up a bit.

Here's a Laidout document of a cube. Make sure there are NO TABS, use all spaces. Data is separated by indentation. The below only has 1 page. You will have to click 'Add Page' 5 times to actually put things on each section:

#Laidout 0.06 Document
docstyle
  imposition Net
    numpages 6
    defaultpaperstyle
      name Letter
      width 8.5
      height 11
      dpi 360
      portrait
    net 
      name Cube
      matrix 1 0 0 1 0 0
      tabs no
      points \
        -1 -1 # 0
        1 -1 # 1
        1 1 # 2
        -1 1 # 3
        -1 -3 # 4
        1 -3 # 5
        3 -1 # 6
        3 1 # 7
        1 3 # 8
        -1 3 # 9
        -3 1 # 10
        -3 -1 # 11
        -1 -5 # 12
        1 -5 # 13
    
      outline 7 6 1 5 13 12 4 0 11 10 3 9 8 2 7
      line 0 1 2 3 0
      line 4 5
    
      face 0 1 2 3 
      face 1 0 4 5 
      face 2 1 6 7 
      face 3 2 8 9 
      face 0 3 10 11 
      face 5 4 12 13 
page 0
  pagestyle PageStyle
    width 11.44122806
    height 0.8221181412
    pageclips
  layer 0
    visible
    prints

Why are there so many red and green corners all over the place?

Those designate axes for the various objects. Red is the X axis, green is the Y (you can remember this by thinking RGB -> XYZ). The corner is the origin. You can toggle the displaying of axes and/or bounding boxes by pressing 'D' (meaning shift-'d').

Why are there awful ugly ridges in my gradients? They should be smooth as silk!!

The colors in the gradients are currently computed from a linearly interpolated stitching function, which basically means you are stuck with stinking, itchy burlap rather than silk. The adventurous might read up on the postscript specification and modify the outputted postscript files to instead use more arbitrary sampled functions. This is a feature planned for a future version.

Why are my paths printing all fubar?

Because editable paths are not well implemented yet. You'll have to wait for a future version. Besides, if you are doing anything serious with paths, you should use Inkscape instead, as Inkscape is VASTLY superior in that regard.

I just spent 9 hours making layouts with a lot of page bleeding and it prints all wrong! Where can I get a voodoo doll of you to stick things in?

Page bleeding is not implemented properly. The current actual bleeding can be seen in the Paper View mode. This is a big problem for the Booklet imposition, but only if you have bleeding pages other than the centerfold. You're on your own about the dolls.

Why is Laidout's interface totally unuseable?

The interface works for me! Besides, what do you want for a version "0.06", in the "Mostly does what I want on my machine" stage of development? I mean who uses version numbers like "0.06" anyway? In future versions, the interface will be much more explanatory and configurable.

Obviously, the entire interface of Laidout, as well as basically all of its code is experimental. In any case, as time goes on, I will be developing a more formal specification of the Laidout Human Interface and Usuability Guidelines, which will not be referred to as the LHIAUG, because experts say that that acronym is totally unusable, but will be referred to collectively as Ligaments, which refers symbolically to the glue that binds us all together as a species.

A current first principle, or Ligament, is that speed of use and providing all the functions I need to make my art books trump all other concerns, as long as I am the only confirmed developer and user of Laidout. Another Ligament is that programs should be able to start up from scratch in no more than one or two seconds. Some allowance may be made if the document one is trying to open is enormous, but starting the program, even complex, full featured programs, should be very rapid, such as with Blender. Furthermore, control-w is NOT A SUBSTITUTE for control-q!!

I typed in laidout.org and all I got was this lousy website!

It is perhaps worth pointing out that Laidout.org has NOTHING to do with SEX, and that really if that is the sort of thing you are looking for, the first thing you should do is turn off your computer, but enough about me. If you want to talk about something really hot, then let's talk about TeX, bay-bee!

---- Laidout Quick key reference ----

 + means shift
 ^ means control

Window gutter:
   ^left-click   Split window mouse was in last
   +left-click   Join to adjacent window
   right-click   Get a menu to split, join, or change


In a viewer:
   'D'       toggle drawing of axes for each object
   's'       toggle showing of the spread (shows only limbo)
   ' '       center the page
   +' '      center the spread

   left      previous tool
   right     next tool
   ','       previous object a
   '.'       next object  
 +^'a'       deselect all currently selected objects\n"
   '<'       previous page  
   '>'       next page   
 
   'T' or left   prev tool 
   't' or right  next tool
   '<'           previous page 
   '>'           next page
   ^'s'          save file
   ^+'s'         save as -- just change the file name?? (not imp)
   F1            popup this quick reference
   F2            popup an About window
   F5            popup new spread editor window

    // these are like inkscape
   pgup      raise selection by 1 within layer
   pgdown    lower selection by 1 within layer
   home      bring selection to top within layer
   end       drop selection to bottom within layer
  

SpreadEditor:
   ' '    Center with all little spreads in view
   'c'    toggle where the page labels go
   'm'    toggle mark of current page
   'M'    reverse toggle mark of current page
   't'    toggle drawing of thumbnails
   'A'    toggle how to arrange the spreads
  ^'A'    force arranging the spreads using current arrange style
   'p'    *** for debugging thumbs


RectInterface:
  'c'     toggle if drag resizes from center or opposite edge
  'd'     toggle showdecs
  'n'     normalize, that is, make norm(xaxis)==norm(yaxis) and y=transpose(x)
  

ImageInterface:
  'c'      Move image to real origin
  'C'      Move image to real origin and clear rotation
  'd'      Toggle drawing decorations
  'f'      Toggle writing filename by the image

ColorPatchInterface:
  'w'    warp the patch to an arc, rows are at radius, cols go from center
  'm'    toggle between drawing just the grid, or draw full colors.
  'a'    select all points, or deselect all if any are selected
  'y'    constrain to y changes, or release the constraint
  'x'    constrain to x changes, or release the constraint
  'o'    decrease how much to recurse for rendering screen preview
  'O'    increase how much to recurse for rendering screen preview
  'R'    increase how many rows to divide each row into
 ^'R'    decrease how many rows to divide each row into
  'r'    subdivide rows
  'c'    subdivide columns
  'C'    increase how many columns to divide each column into
 ^'C'    decrease how many columns to divide each column into
  's'    subdivide rows and columns
  'z'    reset to rectangular
  'w'    warp the patch to an arc, rows are at radius, cols go from center
  'd'    toggle decorations
  'h'    select all points adjacent horizontally to current points
  'v'    select all points adjacent vertically to current points
  '1'    select corners:  0,0  0,3  3,0  3,3
  '2'    select center controls: 1,1  1,2  2,1  2,2
  '3'    select edge controls: 0,1  0,2  1,0  2,0  1,3  2,3  3,1  3,2
  '4'    select top and bottom controls: 1,0  2,0  1,3  2,3
  '5'    select left and right controls: 0,1  0,2  3,1  3,2
  '8'    select a 3x3 group of points around each current point



GradientInterface:
  'r'   Radial gradient
  'l'   Linear Gradient
  'f'   flip the order of the colors
  'd'   Toggle showing of decorations
  left  Select next point
  right Select previous point
  
  shift-left-click: add a new color spot



PathInterface:
  'o'    Select the next pathop.
  left   Roll the curpoints one step previous.
  right  Roll the curpoints one step next.
  'A'    Toggle whether to add points after or before
  'a'    Select all if none selected, else deselect all
  'c'    Toggle closed path
  'b'    Start a new PathsData
  delete or bksp: Delete currently selected points.
  'd'    Toggle displaying of decorations
  '?'    Show some kind of help somewhere....?
  'p'    Like a, but only in current part of a compound path