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Litfass, named after printer and publisher Ernst Litfaß who invented who invented free-standing advertising columns (commonly known as Litfaßsäulen), is a library to create tiling layouts which can be applied and rendered to arbitrary bounding boxes. The most interesting use case, which Litfass also originally was developed for, are (scientific) posters.

Usage

Litfass contains 3 modules:

  • tiling contains the fundamental generator functions like vs (vertical split), hs (horizontal split) and cbx (content box) to create tiling actions.
  • render provides functionality to apply and render tilings to concrete bounding boxes in the document.
  • themes provides default themes (currently just one base theme)

Importing Liftass modules could look as follows:

#import "@preview/litfass:0.1.0"
#import litfass.tiling: *

#let poster = litfass.render.poster.with(theme: litfass.themes.basic)

The manual contains more detailed instructions on how to use Litfass.

Examples

The examples listed below demonstrate the features and usage of Litfass. Click on the images to get to the corresponding .typ file.

Poster

Scientific posters are what Litfass was originally developed for. By using a tiling mechanism the posters content boxes can be neatly laid out ensuring for clear visual edges and level box alignments.

Poster Example

PDF version

Tiling

Once defined, a tiling can be applied to different bounding boxes, also inline boxes usable in standard typst documents.

#let tiling = vs(
  cut: 50%,
  cbx([]),
  hs(cut: 40%, cbx([]), cbx([]))
)
#grid(
  columns: (1fr, 1fr),
  gutter: 4em,
  [
    #let bbox = (width: 20em, height: 15em)
    #inline-box(tiling, ..bbox, stroke: (paint: black, dash: "dashed"))
  ],
  [
    #let bbox = (width: 15em, height: 20em)
    #inline-box(tiling, ..bbox, stroke: (paint: black, dash: "dashed"))
  ],
)
Poster Example

Themes

Litfass also supports the use of themes. As for now, one default theme is provided in litfass.themes.basic. More default themes are planned to be added in the future. In fact, feel free to contribute!

Poster Example

Certain attributes can also be overriden at any point in the tiling hirarcy. The updated theme gets further passed down.

#let highlight-box-style = (
  background: rgb("ffbbb2"),
  title: (
    background: rgb("7a1e1e")
  )
)

    #let tiling = vs(
      cut: 50%,
      cbx(lorem(12), title: [foo]),
      hs(
        cut: 40%,
        cbx(
          lorem(5)),
          cbx(
            lorem(6), 
            title: [bar],
            theme: (box: highlight-box-style)
          ),
      )
    )
Poster Example 
    #let tiling = vs(
      cut: 50%,
      cbx(lorem(12), title: [foo]),
      hs(
        cut: 40%,
        cbx(
          lorem(5)),
          cbx(
            lorem(6), 
            title: [bar],
            theme: (box: highlight-box-style)
          ),
      )
    )
Poster Example

Box Footnotes

Footnotes can be added to content boxes using box-footnote.

Poster Example