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PageBot® Examples

The aim of this project is to offer working PageBot examples, from basic documents to more complete ones. These include explanations of PageBot usage principles, and a user manual and user documentation.

What is PageBot®?

PageBot is a page layout program that enables designers to create high quality documents by programming. It is available both as Python library, and as part of a collection of stand-alone desktop applications. The primary context (and UI) for working with PageBot is DrawBot (code & homepage), and other contexts such as Flat (code & homepage) and even InDesign are also available. These various contexts mean PageBot can output to print-ready formats, and to run in environments other than macOS, such as POSIX web servers, or Google Cloud.

A secondary aim of the PageBot developers is to create a system for making scriptable applications that generate professionally designed documents with high quality typography.

What kinds of publications is PageBot® good for?

Magazines
Newspapers
Books
Newsletters and booklets
Wayfindng signage systems and maps
Corporate identities, including styleguides, business cards, stationary, etc
T-Shirts and other apparrell and 'swag'
Advertisements, for print and digital media (and connecting directly to existing ad systems)
Typeface specimens made by font foundries or distributors
Online documents, such as single page websites
Templates with embedded information for graphic design and typography education

Examples of PageBot® In Use

A website fully generated with PageBot can be found at designdesign.space. It also includes entry points for studies and workshops on how to work with PageBot.
The TYPETR Upgrade website, upgrade.typenetwork.com, is an example where the HTML/CSS code and all illustrations are generated by PageBot scripts.

PageBot® GitHub Projects

A manual, generated automatically with PageBot, is at pagebot.github.io/PageBot
The core library, tutorial and basic examples for PageBot are available under the permissive MIT Open Source license, from github.com/PageBot/PageBot.
A growing library of real document examples are bundled in Examples, also available under the MIT license from github.com/PageBot/Examples
Desktop application examples can be found in the separate a repository, also available under the MIT license, at github.com/PageBot/PageBotApp.

Although publicly available as Open Source under an MIT license, PageBot is still in an alpha phase. Issue reports and contributions are highly appreciated!

We keep track of known bugs, development and future features in GitHub issue trackers. For example:

Current Functionality

Learn more in pagebot.readthedocs.io

Current features include:

Various types of Element objects can be placed on a page or inside other Element objects.
Grids can be defined through style measurements and views.
Page templates (or templates for any other element combination) can be defined and applied.
Automatic layout conditions for elements, for example even distribution across or floating down parent elements.
Specialized views on a Document, such as plain pages, spreads and other layout of page groups, optional with crop-marks, registration-mark, color-strips, file name, etc. The result of all views can be placed on pages as illustration.
Graphics - using all Drawbot drawing tools.
All image filtering supplied by Drawbot ImageObject.
Access and modify images on pixel-level.
Cascading styles, where Element values inherit from parent Elements, similar to CSS behavior.
Text flows are using the macOS FormattedString for all typographic parameters.
Random Text generator for headlines and articles.
Read text from MarkDown and XML (.MD .XML)
Support large amount of text processing functions:
- centered, left, right and justified
- Text to fit a box and elastic box to fit text
- Tabular setting
- Text Flow from one element to another.
- Variable Font UI access and instance creation, as the whole fonttools Python library is available.
- Access to all font metrics.
- Outline Font access modification.
- Space, groups and kerning access and modifcation.
- OT layout and feature access and modification.
3D Positioning of points, for future usage.
Motion Graphics, export as animated .gif and .mov files, keyframing timeline,
Export to PDF, PNG, JPG, SVG, (animated) GIF, MOV, XML, through programmable views.
Build web sites, pre-compiling all images used into the formats that can be displayed by browsers (.PNG .JPG .SVG)
Automatic table of contents, image references, quote references, etc. from composed documents.

Future Developments

Element classes supporting various types of graphs, info-graphics, maps, PageBot document layout, Variable Font axes layout, font metrics.
Font class supporting CFF (.otf) and UFO.
Views for thumbnail page overview, combined booklet-sheets for print, site-maps, etc.
Add export of text to MarkDown .md files.
Add export to online documents, such as HTML/CSS/JS for specific designs of web pages, such as Kirby.
Export to WordPress® PHP sites.
Export to Ruby®/Sketchup® data files.
Add export to Angular® files.
Export to InDesign® and Illustrator®, as close as possible translating PageBot elements to the native file format of these applications.
Time line, definition and editing, length and fps.
Integrate the PageBot manual builder with other export functions of the library.
Add more unit-tests to guarantee the integrity of the library and output consistency.
Automatic support of ornament frames, in connection to the Element borders and the layout of exiting (TN) border fonts.

License

All PageBot® source code is available as open source under the MIT license.

However, some other separate works are aggregated in this repository for convenience, and are available under their own licenses. See LICENSE files for details.

PageBot® is a registered trademark U.S. Serial Number: 87-457,280 Owner: Buro Petr van Blokland + Claudia Mens VOF Docket/Reference Number: 1538-25