# Introduction

Welcome to the world of PerlPoint. Efforts were made to make your stay as comfortable as possible. Depending on your travel experience, several things might look hard, unusual or rough at very first sight, but don't hesitate to come in and look around. You might discover new promising areas and tell your travel stories another way then.

First, make sure you have the software installed. For these first steps, you need `perl` (5.00503 or above), `PerlPoint::Package` and `PerlPoint::Converters` from CPAN. Install them in the mentioned order, according to the attached instructions (please do not remove the installation directory of `PerlPoint::Converters`). Additionally, you need a text editor and a Web browser.

PerlPoint is both a presentation and a documentation toolset. More precise, its a toolset to generate presentations and documentations. You will write a simple text and start a converter to make the final documents from this source. The final format is your choice, depending on the used converter. So you can make a presentation, speaker notes, handouts, an internet documentation and a brochure all from the same text source, but looking very individual.

Because of this two step architecture PerlPoint authors deal both with the text format and several converters. The text source describes structure and contents of your document, while a converter adds layout. Let's start.