Hello, all,
of course I subscribed because I'm training Perl occasionally. Having
said this, maybe I can add a few informations about the current
implementation of PerlPoint which addresses various needs mentioned in
this thread. As Johan said, there's a new version which is based on
Tom's original ideas, but extended in many ways.
This is not intended to be advertising but information. The following
lists are incomplete and just written instantly.
* Presentations are written in ASCII with a simple but powerful markup.
Tags can take options. Unlimited tag nesting. Macros to define own
tags, taking options as well. Variables. Embedding of target code.
Embedding of Perl code to produce dynamic document parts. Inclusion
of files automatically made examples. Lists. Conditional processing
of document parts depending on conditions written in Perl (with a
partially simplified interface for non Perl users). Links and
sequences. Unlimited document nesting, including macro and code
library support.
* A parser produces an intermediate format called a stream.
* Event driven backends use a general module to process the stream and
transform it into various formats. So an unlimited number of target
formats can be supported. Various converters already exist.
* HTML: main target format. All the advantages Mark pointed out. Lots
of options to configure the target layout, including use of frames,
use of a Java navigation applet, automatically generated index,
navigation bars, internal and external links. Layout options can by
stored as a style which may be simply reused then. Predefined
Layouts in the distribution. CSS support.
* SDF: full featured converter, reference implementation. SDF can be
transformed in various more formats, including POD, ASCII and more.
* PDF: easily made from SDF via sdf and htmldoc. PostScript as
well.
* LaTex: converter is in alpha state but already produces
results worth to look at.
* Clintons Perl Projector: already addressed (demo converter)
(I hoped you would see the announcement on c.l.p.a, Clinton ;-)
* PPresenter: demo converter available. This is the first
converter producing XML. I hope there will be more, e.g.
a converter to the Open Office Presenter format.
PerlPoint is documented both for document and converter authors, and
we're still working on document improvements.
It is not only usable for presentations but for documentation as well,
e.g. I plan to transform the Event tutorial to PerlPoint and to publish
the sources. The PDF result will be very similar to the existing one.
The benefit of this approach is that because of PerlPoints document
nesting many authors can contribute to a document easily.
We use the software in our own Perl trainings. There are already
hundreds of pages, including tests and solutions. Conditional
processing makes it easy to give students a version different from
teachers one, let's say without solutions, or to publish more and more
of the materials from day to day. A printed version and slides can be
made easily from the same source (just use another converter), and the
presentation can be updated on the fly.
Please take this as an invitation as well: there may be features we did
not see which could be useful to make good training presentations.
Please let us know. More, the concept is designed to be flexible and
extendible. A lot of people designed own software for a similar
purpose, maybe someone is interested to join the PerlPoint team and to
help improve existing converters or to write a new one which she/he is
in need of.
Jochen
P.S.: More information, based on this summers releases, can be found on
www.yapc.org/Europe/2001/proceedings/15/yapc-2001/doc in the various
*-slides directories (start with frame_set.html).
