Handout Generator

Bugs:

• Some pdf pages come out with the wrong orientation in the final handout.pdf
  • I am unable to find a smooth solution. The pdf-lib library I use has not been maintained for 2 years. If a slide is in the wrong rotation, only way is to rotate every single slide/page of the powerpoint/pdf manually or by using a program.

To Add:

• Support for pptx

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Handout Generator was created to give more options to creating a handout like the ability to create a handout from the command line (TUI) and the ability to customize the template of the handout (ex. # of images, # of lines, # of textfields, their positions, their size and etc.).

Major Goals

1. Create a website that will allow people to create custom templates and generate handouts using a GUI (also allow people to download the custom templates as JSON and allow the templates to be imported into the TUI version: handgen)
   1. Reason on the focus for a GUI to create templates is because the only way I can think of to create a custom template without a GUI is to create a JSON file from scratch and importing that into the program via a flag, but that can be really annoying and frustrating to debug for the end user if something goes wrong.
2. Create the backend with user authentication & database for storing custom templates.

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Table Of Contents:

• Handout Generator
  • Table Of Contents:
  • How To install:
  • Instructions for Global Installation:
    • Default Template IDs:
      • One Image Per Page
      • Two Image Per Page
      • Three Image Per Page
      • Four Image Per Page
  • Fundamentals - How It Works
    • What is a template?
    • Page Template
    • Pictures
    • Lines
    • Textfield
    • Page Number
  • Explanation for Handout Class

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How To install:

• Library: npm i handgen
• Executable: npm i -g handgen

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Instructions for Global Installation:

• handgen uses 4 flags: -i, -o, -default, -online
  • -i (required)
    • Specifies the path to the asset directory where all of the source images & pdfs are going to be at.
  • -o (optional)
    • Specifies the path of the pdf file produced by handgen
    • When flag is not specified, the default path is in the same directory handgen is executed, and the pdf name will be called "handout.pdf".
  • -default (optional)
    • Specifies the id of one of the default handout templates
    • When flag is not specified, the default ID will be "ThreeTraitLine".
  • -online (optional)
    • Not available yet, but it also specifies the id of a handout template from cloud.
    • When flag is not specified, the program will use the default template specified above in "-default".
    • -default and -online may not be used as flags at the same time.

Default Template IDs:

One Image Per Page

• OneTraitNothing
  • A portrait mode template with only one giant picture in the center.
• OneTraitLine
  • A portrait mode template with one giant picture and some lines.
• OneTraitField
  • A portrait mode template with one giant picture and a textfield.
• OneScapeNothing
  • A landscape mode template with only one giant picture in the center.

Two Image Per Page

• TwoTraitNothing
  • A portrait mode template with two pictures, one picture on top and one picture on bottom.
• TwoScapeLine
  • A landscape mode template with two pictures, one picture to the left and one picture to the right, and contain lines below each picture.
• TwoScapeField
  • A landscape mode template with two pictures, one picture to the left and one picture to the right, and contain a field below each picture.

Three Image Per Page

• ThreeTraitLine [DEFAULT]
  • A portrait mode template with three pictures to the left and lines to the right of each picture.
• ThreeTraitField
  • A portrait mode template with three pictures to the left and a textfield to the right of each picture.
• ThreeScapeLine
  • A landscape mode template with three pictures and lines below each picture.
• ThreeScapeField
  • A landscape mode template with three pictures and a textfield below each picture.

Four Image Per Page

• FourTraitNothing
  • A portrait mode template with only four pictures evenly spaced.
• FourScapeNothing
  • A landscape mode template with only four pictures evenly spaced.

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Fundamentals - How It Works

Before we delve into how to use handgen in a JS project, we first have to go over the components and the structures that a handout template use to create a handout pdf:

• Page
• Pictures
• Lines
• Textfield
• Text

What is a template?

• A template is the building block used to build a component (the actual page/picture/line/etc.)
• A template specifies the attributes of of a component.
  • For example, for a line component, you might specify the width and height of a picture component.
• All templates comes from JSON objects.

Page Template

• A page template contains the following components: pictures, lines, textfield and page number. It is also possible to tweak the width or height of a page template.
• There can be more than one page template in a handout template. For example, on one page, you might want three pictures, and on another page, you might want one picture instead.

Pictures

• A picture template can be an image (png, jpg, jpeg) or a pdf.
  • This means that both images and pdf can be crammed (embedded and/or minified) into the handout pdf.
• The type for a picture contains the following properties (or attributes): width, height, x and y coordinates.

Lines

• A line template is a straight line with the color black.
• The type for a line contains the following properties: x1, y1, x2, y2 coordinates.

Textfield

• A textfield template is a rectangular box where the inside of the box is writeable with a keyboard.
• The type for a textfield contains the following properties: width, height, x and y coordinates.

Page Number

• A page number template specifies the location where a page number is located on a page.
• The type for a page number is called a Label, and a Label contains the following properties: size, x and y coordinates.
• Planned on being optional

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Explanation for Handout Class

To use the Handout class. First, you need to instantiate a handout

import { Asset, TemplateRepo, Handout } from 'handgen';

const handout = new Handout();

There is only 1 method exposed from Handout, and that is createHandout(assets, templateID, repo).

• assets: Asset[] -> Contains an array of assets, which are the images, pdf and/or pptx that you would like to insert into the resulting handout pdf.
  • Type Asset is a type that specifies that an object must contain two properties: "type" and "bytes".
    • type is a string property that holds the extension of the asset that got turned into a byte.
    • bytes is the buffer of the asset (image or pdf file).
• templateID: string -> Currently only supports default provided template ID.
• repo: TemplateRepo -> Specifies if the template is coming from local (default templates) or from remote (online templates)
  • Type TemplateRepo is a string of either "default" or "online";