[OS X TeX] Two random reflections

[Bruno Voisin]

Le 27 janv. 06 à 16:08, Herbert Schulz a écrit :

> Are you using Keynote 3 yet? Does the LinkBack plugin still work  
> with this new version of Keynote?

Not yet. iWork '06 ordered straight after Steve's MacWorld keynote,  
but at the French Apple Store shipping is starting on February 1  
only. I just checked for my order, there's now an expected delivery  
date of February 6.
>
> I think the problem you note is more generally that Keynote doesn't  
> have in-line graphics; graphics are always ties to the page. Pages  
> does have this distinction and I assume they both share lots of  
> code so it's on my wish list.
>
> I traded e-mails with the author of the Keynote LinkBack plugin and  
> he said it turned out to be much more difficult to write a plugin  
> for Pages although he didn't say why.

A possible reason could be that the Keynote 1 file format was  
properly documented:

<http://developer.apple.com/technotes/tn2002/tn2073.html>
<http://developer.apple.com/technotes/tn2002/tn2067.html>

On the other hand, the file formats for Pages 1 and Keynote 2 have  
only been scarcely documented. From <http://developer.apple.com/qa/ 
qa2005/qa1412.html> :
> Although the complete XML schema for Keynote is not available and  
> will not be made public, the "iWork Programming Guide" (which  
> covers Keynote and Pages) provides details on the new file format.  
> This programming guide is available in the Developer Reference  
> Library under Apple Applications > Keynote.
Possibly with iWork '05 they (Apple) started considering they were  
giving too much information away, which is why they never published  
such inside info about Keynote 2 and Pages 1. Rather unpleasant  
atttitude IMO, not any better than MS.

The iWork Programming Guide at <http://developer.apple.com/ 
documentation/AppleApplications/Conceptual/iWork2-0_XML/index.html>  
gives indeed some info on the file formats, but possibly not enough  
for the LinkBack plugin. For example:

> Important: The information in this programming guide is intended to  
> supersede the following Apple technical documents:
>
>
> Technical Note TN2067, available at http://developer.apple.com/ 
> technotes/tn2002/tn2067.html, which lists the XML schema file that  
> defines the syntax of a Keynote 1.x APXL file. [...]
>
> Technical Note TN2073, available at http://developer.apple.com/ 
> technotes/tn2002/tn2073.html, which describes in detail how to  
> create a slide-list in a sample Keynote 1.x presentation. [...]
> Both technical notes are no longer applicable for developers who  
> want to work with Keynote 2.x presentations or with Pages 1.x  
> layouts and designs.
>
> This document does not describe the complete XML schema for either  
> Pages 1.x or Keynote 2.x. The complete XML schema for both  
> applications is not available and will not be made public. Nor is  
> this document, by any stretch of the imagination, intended as a  
> comprehensive tutorial on how to customize or extend third-party  
> applications that rely on the schemas of each iWork application.  
> The focus here is on bringing developers up to date on how the  
> schemas work, and what they may need to know in order to take  
> advantage of the robust feature sets available in each application.
>
> Important: This document only covers the file formats for Keynote  
> 2.x and Pages 1.x. Future versions of those products may use a  
> different file format than the ones described here. Developers  
> should understand that Apple cannot guarantee that the file formats  
> described herein will be supported in those future versions of the  
> iWork applications as they are currently supported. Changes to  
> these file formats ought to be expected.

Again, this all feels very MS-like.


There used to be a mailing list for developers of Keynote tools  
<http://www.opendarwin.org/pipermail/keynote-tools/>, but it doesn't  
seem to have really caught up.

Bruno------------------------- Info --------------------------
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