paulirish/sile

Simon's Improved Layout Engine

What is SILE?

SILE is a typesetting system; its job is to produce beautiful printed documents. Conceptually, SILE is similar to TeX—from which it borrows some concepts and even syntax and algorithms—but the similarities end there. Rather than being a derivative of the TeX family SILE is a new typesetting and layout engine written from the ground up using modern technologies and borrowing some ideas from graphical systems such as InDesign.

What can I do with SILE (that I can’t do with TeX)?

First, have a look at the show-off file. SILE allows you to:

• Produce complex document layouts using frames.

• Easily extend the typesetting system in a high-level programming language (Lua).

• Directly process XML to PDF without the use of XSL stylesheets.

• Typeset text on a grid.

Download and installation

For OS X

A formula is available for homebrew that can install both stable and head versions. Just run brew install sile for the latest stable release or brew install sile --HEAD to build from the latest git commit.

For Linux (prepackaged distros)

• Arch Linux packages are available in the AUR that can be installed using your prefered package manager (e.g. yaourt -S sile). Use sile for the latest stable release or sile-git to build from the latest git commit.

From source

SILE can be downloaded from its home page, or directly from the release page.

SILE is written in the Lua programming language, so you will need a Lua installation. It also relies on external libraries to access fonts and write PDF files. Its preferred combination of libraries is harfbuzz and libtexpdf, a PDF creation library extracted from TeX. Harfbuzz should be available from your operating system's package manager. (For Harfbuzz to work you will also need freetype2 and fontconfig installed.) SILE also requires the ICU libraries for correct Unicode handling.

You also need to install the following Lua libraries; they can be installed using luarocks, if not available from your system's package manager.

• lpeg
• luaexpat
• lua-zlib
• luafilesystem

If you are building from a a git clone, start by running the script to setup your environment (if you are using the source tarball this is unnecessary):

$ ./bootstrap.sh

Once your dependencies are installed, run:

$ ./configure
$ make install

This will place the SILE libraries and executable in a sensible location.

Default font

As of SILE 0.9.5, the default font is Gentium Plus, available from here. If this font is not installed on your system, you won't be able to use the examples without modification. (Previously we used Original Gentium, but that's getting harder to get hold of.)

If you are using OS X with Homebrew, the easiest way to install Gentium Plus is through the Homebrew Fonts caskroom:

$ brew tap caskroom/fonts
$ brew cask install font-gentium-plus

Testing

If all goes well you should be able to compile one of the sample documents like this:

$ sile examples/test.sil
This is SILE 0.9.2
<examples/test.sil><examples/macros.sil>[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28]

You should now have examples/test.pdf ready for review.

Finding out more

Please read the full SILE manual for more information about what SILE is and how it can help you. There are example documents (source and PDF) in the examples/ directory. There's also an FAQ available.

Contact

Please report bugs and send patches and pull requests at the github repository. For questions and discussion, please join the mailing list.

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License terms

SILE is distributed under the MIT licence.