Templates

Luckily, for most cases you don’t need to create your own template, as the default template is very simple and most things you need to do is doable with css. However, I don’t want Hovercraft! to set up a wall where it isn’t flexible enough for your needs, so I added support to make your own templates.

You need to create your own template if you are unsatisfied with the HTML that Hovercraft! generates, for example if you need to use another version of HTML or if the reStructuredText you are using isn’t being rendered in a way that is useful for you. Although if you aren’t happy with the HTML generated from the reStructuredText that could very well be a bug, so open an issue on Github for discussion.

Hovercraft! generates presentations by converting the reStructuredText into XML and then using XSLT to translate the XML into HTML.

Templates are directories with a configuration file, a template XSL file, and any number of CSS, JS and other resource files.

The template configuration file

The configuration file is normally called template.cfg, but if you have several configuration files in one template directory, you can specify which one to use by specifying the full path to the configuration file. However, if you just specify the template directory, template.cfg will be used.

Template files are in configparser format, which is an extended ini-style format. They are very simple, and have only one section, [hovercraft]. Any other sections will be ignored. Many of the parameters are lists that often do not fit on one line. In that case you can split the line up over several lines, but indenting the lines. The amount of indentation doesn’t make any difference, except aesthetically.

The parameters in the [hovercraft] section are:

  • template The name of the xsl template.
  • css A list of CSS filenames separated by whitespace. These files will get included in the final file with “all” as the media specification.
  • css-<media> A list of CSS filenames separated by whitespace. These files will get included in the final file with the media given in the parameter. So the files listed for the parameter “css-print” will get “print” as their media specification and a key like “css-screen,print” will return media “screen,print”.
  • js-header A list of filenames separated by whitespace. These files will get included in the target file as header script links.
  • js-body A list of filenames separated by whitespace. These files will get included in the target file as script links at the end of the file. The files impress.js, impressConsole.js and hovercraft.js typically need to be included here.
  • resources A list of filenames separated by whitespace that will be copied to the target directory, but nothing else is done with them. Images and fonts used by CSS will be copied anyway, but other resources may be added here.
  • resource-directories A list of directory names separated by whitespace. These will be treated like resources above, ie only copied to the target directory. The directory contents will be copied recursively, but hidden files (like files starting with a . are ignored.

An example:

[hovercraft]
template = template.xsl

css = css/screen.css
      css/impressConsole.css

css-print = css/print.css

js-header = js/dateinput.js

js-body = js/impress.js
          js/impressConsole.js
          js/hovercraft.js

resources = images/back.png
            images/forward.png
            images/up.png
            images/down.png

The template file

The file specified with the template parameters is the actual XSLT template that will perform the translation from XML to HTML.

Most of the time you can just copy the default template file in hovercraft/templates/default/template.xsl and modify it. XSLT is very complex, but modifying the templates HTML is quite straightforward as long as you don’t have to touch any of the <xsl:...> tags.

Also, the HTML that is generated is XHTML compatible and quite straightforward, so for the most case all you would need to generate another version of HTML, for example strict XHTML, would be to change the doctype.

But if you need to add or change the main generated HTML you can add and change HTML statements in this main file as you like. See for example how the little help-popup is added to the bottom of the HTML.

If you want to change the way the reStructuredText is rendered things get slightly more complex. The XSLT rules that convert the reStructuredText XML into HTML are contained in a separate file, reST.xsl. For the most part you can just include it in the template file with the following code:

<xsl:import href="resource:templates/reST.xsl" />

The resource: part here is not a part of XSLT, but a part of Hovercraft! It tells the XSLT translation that the file specified should not be looked up on the file system, but as a Python package resource. Currently the templates/reST.xsl file is the only XSLT resource import available.

If you need to change the way reStructuredText is rendered you need to make a copy of that file and modify it. You then need to make a copy of the main template and change the reference in it to your modified XSLT file.

None of the XSLT files need to be copied to the target, and should not be listed as a resource in the template configuration file.