Pollen is not a self-contained GUI program like Adobe InDesign. It's a software package that runs atop the Racket language environment (also a free download).
Your three main tools in Pollen will be a text editor (for those starting out, I recommend @other-doc['(lib "scribblings/drracket/drracket.scrbl")]), a terminal window, and a web browser. The terminal commands you'll be using are simple, but if you haven't used your terminal window before, this is the moment to learn where it is. (On OS X, your terminal window is called Terminal; on Windows it's called the Windows Command Processor.)
Your three main tools in Pollen will be a text editor (for those starting out, I recommend @other-doc['(lib "scribblings/drracket/drracket.scrbl")]), a terminal window, and a web browser. The terminal commands you'll be using are simple, but if you haven't used your terminal window before, this is the moment to learn where it is. (On macOS, your terminal window is called Terminal; on Windows it's called the Windows Command Processor.)
After the initial download, Pollen does not require a network connection.
In situations where Pollen needs a pagetree but can't find one, it will automatically synthesize a pagetree from a listing of files in the directory. This arises most frequently when @secref["The_project_dashboard"] in a directory that doesn't contain an explicit @filepath{index.ptree}. This way, you can get going with a project without having to stop for @racketfont{.ptree} housekeeping.
As usual, convenience has a cost. Pollen doesn't know anything about which files in your directory are relevant to the project, so it includes all of them. For instance, if you start your project server on an OS X desktop, you'll see things like @filepath{Thumbs.db} and @filepath{desktop.ini}.
As usual, convenience has a cost. Pollen doesn't know anything about which files in your directory are relevant to the project, so it includes all of them. For instance, if you start your project server on a macOS desktop, you'll see things like @filepath{Thumbs.db} and @filepath{desktop.ini}.
Also, though you can use pagetree-navigation functions like @racket[next] or @racket[siblings] with an automatic pagetree, the results of these functions are apt to include irrelevant files. So if you need to do pagetree navigation, that's probably the point where you want to start using an explicit pagetree.
Still not satisfied? Still want to see one more cute Pollen trick?
OK, you win. Let's not stop at LaTeX —let's go all the way to PDF using the LaTeX PDF converter, known as @exec{pdflatex}. (This is a command-line program that must be installed on your machine for this trick to work. I made this example on OS X 10.9.5.)
OK, you win. Let's not stop at LaTeX —let's go all the way to PDF using the LaTeX PDF converter, known as @exec{pdflatex}. (This is a command-line program that must be installed on your machine for this trick to work. I made this example on macOS 10.9.5.)
How do we do this? We'll follow the pattern we've already established, but with one wrinkle. To make a PDF, we need to generate LaTeX output first. So we actually don't need to add new branches to our tag functions —we'll just let PDF piggyback on our LaTeX branches. The big difference will be in the template, where instead of returning a LaTeX source file, we'll send it through @exec{pdflatex} and get the binary PDF file that results.
@ -25,7 +25,7 @@ I used @link["http://pygments.org/"]{Pygments} for syntax highlighting in @link[
@itemlist[#:style 'ordered
@item{Make sure you have @code{pygments} already installed. @link["http://pygments.org/download/"]{Instructions here.} Pretty easy —for instance, on my OS X machine, it simply require @code{easy_install pygments} at the command line.}
@item{Make sure you have @code{pygments} already installed. @link["http://pygments.org/download/"]{Instructions here.} Pretty easy —for instance, on my macOS machine, it simply require @code{easy_install pygments} at the command line.}
@item{The @racketmodname[pollen/unstable/pygments] helper module provides a function called @racket[highlight]. To make @racket[highlight] available in your source file, you can either add the line @code{◊(require pollen/unstable/pygments)} to the source file itself, or put it in @racket["pollen.rkt"] and @racket[provide] it from there.}
