The graphical user interface of Typesetter's Desk is designed to ease the workflow of large-scale typesetting projects. An important aspect of its design is the use of vertical panels. While creating documents, it is important to maximize vertical space while keeping widths as small as is reasonable to ease reading. By hiding status bars, putting the menu and tool bars on the side, and entering full screen mode, the panels stretch the entire height of the screen.
Before explaining the usage of each panel, it is important to understand the terminology of Typesetter's Desk:
- A source is a text file.
- A directory of sources is a project.
- A project can have a unique main file called a root.
- Each source can be typeset.
- The result of typesetting a source is a document.
To illustrate, when working on LaTeX projects, a source is a LaTeX text file, to typeset means to compile with, say, pdflatex, and the document is the resulting PDF. When working on web projects, a source is an HTML file, to typeset means to simply save the changes to the file, and the resulting document is what is viewed in a web browser.
With this in mind, the three panels from left to right of Typesetter's Desk are as follows:
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Utility Panel - This panel holds docks that provide functionality. Probably the most important dock is the Project Dock. A combobox listing open projects, the root, and the directory of the current project are located at the top of this dock. A single click will open the root. Below this is a directory listing of the project. If it is a LaTeX project with a root, the bottom of the dock contains 3 tabs: Files is a tree consisting of all files reachable by includes or inputs from the root, Contents is the table of contents of the project, and Labels is a list of labels found throughout the project. These are automatically generated by Typesetter's Desk. Clicking an item in these tabs will bring the user to the appropriate location in the appropriate source. Here is a screenshot:
The image includes an editor from the Source Panel (see below) to illustrate the use of color. Each project has its own color chosen by the user, and the colors of the letters in the tabs indicate the project of the source. For example, the first two tabs are green, so they belong to the "General Education" project. The third tab has black letters, which means that this source is not a member of an open project. Lastly, the fourth tab has red letters, indicating that it is a member of an open project that is not currently displayed in the Project Panel. To display that project, select it from the combobox at the top of the Project Panel.
Other docks in the Utility Panel include the Typeset Dock, which is a TeX-focused dock that shows compile messages, the log file, and any errors and warnings, the Find/Replace Dock, which handles searching and replacing in the currently displayed source, all open sources, all sources in the current project, and all sources reachable from the current root, and Keyword Docks, which are generated by XML files and provide keyword lists, such as for LaTeX. Each of these docks have clickable lists. For example, double-clicking an error in the Typeset Dock will cause the program to jump to the appropriate line in the appropriate source.
The next images are screenshots of these panels:
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Source Panel - This holds editors containing the open sources (usually either a LaTeX- or HTML-related file). The current editor used by Typesetter's Desk is KTextEditor, the editor class for Kate. It includes syntax highlighting, automatic spell checking, code folding, and bookmarks. It is a beautiful editor. Here is a screenshot:
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View Panel - This panel displays the document. It is currently able to display PDF documents using Poppler and act as a web browser for HTML documents. As seen in the screenshot below, the View Panel can display the document as a single page, facing pages, or as a book (if displaying a PDF), can scale the document, or split the view. The document can also be searched, and the view panel can be detached. Lastly, if the document is a PDF, a double-click will cause Typesetter's Desk to jump to the appropriate line in the appropriate LaTeX source, and selecting "Goto PDF" from the context menu of an editor will reverse the process. This mechanism is provided by SyncTeX.
The image includes an editor from the Source Panel (see below) to illustrate the use of color. Each project has its own color chosen by the user, and the colors of the letters in the tabs indicate the project of the source. For example, the first two tabs are green, so they belong to the "General Education" project. The third tab has black letters, which means that this source is not a member of an open project. Lastly, the fourth tab has red letters, indicating that it is a member of an open project that is not currently displayed in the Project Panel. To display that project, select it from the combobox at the top of the Project Panel.
