Re: Slide-manufacturing software
Just another me-too: http://dev.macperl.org/files/scripts/makeslides It produces valid XHTML with customizable CSS and LINK REL goodies etc. e.g.: http://pudge.net/macperl/tpc/2001/tpc_2001_presentation/ -- Chris Nandor [EMAIL PROTECTED]http://pudge.net/ Open Source Development Network[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://osdn.com/
Re: Slide-manufacturing software
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).
Re: Slide-manufacturing software
On Wed, Dec 12, 2001 at 02:12:33PM -0800, Tim Maher/CONSULTIX wrote: > So we use (brace yourselves) MS-Word, having standardized on it in the > late 80s, when UNIX-based solutions were limited to troff (which we still > use to print Lab Exercises). Then we render it in PDF for projection, > which is a great tool that produces beautiful output from impressively > tiny files. > > I personally view HTML-based approaches as a reasonable time-saver for > conference presentations, but for corporate classes, where the extra > development effort can be amortized over years rather than hours, that's > the best way to go. I have to agree. When I look for an HTML-based solution, I tend to pour on the angle brackets and use DocBook. The chunking works pretty well, and I'm one of the poor demented souls who doesn't fear hacking DSSSL or XSLT to do some fine-grained tweaking. But mostly I use DocBook because I can focus on the structure of the presentation and not worry about the workings of a chunking algorithm. For corporate training and presentations, I've been using PowerPoint, mostly because the organizations for whom I'm presenting have already standardized on PowerPoint. It's a pain, but it gets the job done (until you need to remediate slides...) and produces clean, readable slides. Long term, I'm looking to do an all XML solution that goes to PDF and whatever else is worthwhile (including 6-up speaker notes, 2-up student notes, etc.) all within the same tool chain -- no PostScript hacking. Here, I want to focus on the toolchain, not the authoring format. Once the tools are there, it's a SMOP to map a POD dialect into it, or any other ad-hoc formatting language for that matter such as mjd's txt2slides grammar. Z.
Re: Slide-manufacturing software
I agree completely with Johan; despite the conveniences of HTML, we don't find it adequate to our needs. Apart from getting marginally attractive large characters on a projection screen, which can usually be achieved with some degree of effort on any computer platform, we also want the *printed notes* to look as good as possible, and HTML is just too simplistic to handle all the typeface/font changes and layout elements we like to use. It's also nice to be able to be able to do "conditional inclusions" of sub-documents (for different versions), to manage styles conveniently, and have proofreader revisions show up in a different color, etc. And of course we like to automatically generate indices, cross-references and tables of contents too. So we use (brace yourselves) MS-Word, having standardized on it in the late 80s, when UNIX-based solutions were limited to troff (which we still use to print Lab Exercises). Then we render it in PDF for projection, which is a great tool that produces beautiful output from impressively tiny files. I personally view HTML-based approaches as a reasonable time-saver for conference presentations, but for corporate classes, where the extra development effort can be amortized over years rather than hours, that's the best way to go. -Tim *=* | Dr. Tim Maher, CEO, Consultix(206) 781-UNIX/8649; ask for FAX# | | EMAIL: [EMAIL PROTECTED] WEB: http://www.consultix-inc.com | | /etc/cotd: find /earth -follow -name bin_laden -print | xargs rm -rf | *=*
Re: Slide-manufacturing software
> "MD" == Mark-Jason Dominus <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: MD> * I can be absolutely sure that no matter what kind of computer MD> equipment and software are available at the teaching site, I will be MD> able to display the slides with no trouble. i agree. MD> * I have the option of giving the presentation straight from my home MD> web server or from a local copy of the slides. When I want to put a MD> presentation on my web site, it's already in the right format. MD> Since the slides are separate HTML documents, that means lots more MD> documents for google to index, which means more people coming to MD> visit my web site. i have done presentations over the phone with the audience using HTML slides i made. works well. MD> * I don't have to suffer from the humiliation of standing up at MD> the Open Source Conference and using a Microsoft product to MD> display my slides. The OSC is full of Power Point presentations. MD> I don't know these people can do it; I wouldn't be able to face MD> myself in the mirror if I did that. hear! hear! MD> For a long time, I didn't make txt2slides available at all, because I MD> didn't want to support it. Finally I stuck a copy of it on my web MD> site. Some other folks have used it successfully. i looked at an earlier version of this and decided to roll my own. if you want it ask me for it. it autobuilds an index page, has foward and back links and i even made support for trees of pages but i found that was harder to navigate (shades of texinfo!). MD> * I updated the web site version mine isn't on the web but i could put it up there. it is not bad code and can be hacked easily. some may not like the html output but that is easily changed. also it has some odd quirly support for stuff like haiku's in a box and other things. MD> * I wrote a little bit of documentation none for me so far. MD> It comes with a complete example. It's a pile of junk, but it's a MD> very useful and successful pile of junk. Making slides is quick and MD> easy. I love using it and I like the way the slides come out. i like mine too and the input format is a simple text file with very simple markup. now, if llamacard ever came out, i might switch to it. but i haven't seen much of it since TPC4 and i heard seattle pm (spug?) took it over from damian's grad student who first developed it. uri -- Uri Guttman -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.stemsystems.com -- Stem is an Open Source Network Development Toolkit and Application Suite - - Stem and Perl Development, Systems Architecture, Design and Coding Search or Offer Perl Jobs http://jobs.perl.org
Re: Slide-manufacturing software
Mark-Jason Dominus <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Yes, Tom wrote perlpoint, and it's very nice. I've used it for > several hours' worth of material. But I don't think it's as flexible > as txt2slides is now. It is faster, however. I think brian refers to the 'new' perlpoint, not Tom's version: From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Jochen Stenzel) Subject: PerlPoint::Package 0.36 released To: "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2001 23:18:24 +0100 Reply-To: "Jochen Stenzel" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Hello, it has been quiet silent here for a while, so I assume everything works well ;-) Nevertheless, there's an update of the package, I just released version 0.36. [...] -- Johan
Re: Slide-manufacturing software
Mark-Jason Dominus <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > For my conference talks and corporate classes, I make my slides with a > home-grown piece of software, called 'txt2slides'. The software is a > big pile of hacks, but I'm very happy with it. txt2slides takes a > slide file, which is almost plain text, and turns it into a series of > HTML files, one per slide. > > The output is in HTML. Using HTML for the slides has a number of > major benefits: And a whole list of drawbacks. Sorry, although I feel very much sympathy for this approach, and for lots of other related approaches like perlpoint, HTML is just not good enough. Why? Because it does not look nice. Font rendering is lousy, no good way to use graphics, limited styles. You always have to exactly find the place to click on to get to the next slide. Actually, it only looks acceptable with one specific browser on one specific platform that we want to avoid. So I decided to stick with PDF *). When I go for a training or presentation I take my notebook with me, but also a floppy containing the PDF files. If all else fails, I can download a copy from my web site. > Every computer has a web browser. Every computer has a PDF vieuwer. -- Johan *) My slides are generated using Perl programs that transform text into LaTeX. Then via PostScript to PDF. Other Perl programs manipulate the intermediate PostScript to create handouts, and so on.
Re: Slide-manufacturing software
On Wed, Dec 12, 2001 at 12:23:29PM -0500, _brian_d_foy wrote: > In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, [EMAIL PROTECTED] > (Mark-Jason Dominus) wrote: > > For my conference talks and corporate classes, I make my slides with a > > home-grown piece of software, called 'txt2slides'. The software is a > > big pile of hacks, but I'm very happy with it. txt2slides takes a > > slide file, which is almost plain text, and turns it into a series of > > HTML files, one per slide. > > Randal and i did something similar at WebBuilder 2001 this > month. i was supposed to make a PDF file, which we normally > do, but Framemaker was complaining. Jeffery Zeldman had just > given a big talk on style sheets and XML, so we hacked up an XML > version of the slides, wrote a small program to parse it, then > applied cascading style sheets to the very simple HTML. My $.02, I hacked up a script called Projector. It's Perl/Tk based and works with Pudge's mkslides markup format or custom text format (very POD-like). It's at: http://geeksalad.org/projector/ It's got lots of features, which are all listed there. Additionally, since it uses Tk (and canvases), I just hacked up a script to run through the presentation and make 6-slide-per-page thumbnails for keeping notes... -- Clinton A. PierceTeach Yourself Perl in 24 Hours *and* [EMAIL PROTECTED]Perl Developer's Dictionary "If you rush a Miracle Man, for details, see http://geeksalad.org you get rotten Miracles." --Miracle Max, The Princess Bride
Re: Slide-manufacturing software
> we hacked up an XML version of the slides, That sounds like a nasty lot of typing. > Perlpoint, a similar program, does about the same thing the this > or txt2slides does, Yes, Tom wrote perlpoint, and it's very nice. I've used it for several hours' worth of material. But I don't think it's as flexible as txt2slides is now. It is faster, however.
Re: Slide-manufacturing software
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Mark-Jason Dominus) wrote: > For my conference talks and corporate classes, I make my slides with a > home-grown piece of software, called 'txt2slides'. The software is a > big pile of hacks, but I'm very happy with it. txt2slides takes a > slide file, which is almost plain text, and turns it into a series of > HTML files, one per slide. Randal and i did something similar at WebBuilder 2001 this month. i was supposed to make a PDF file, which we normally do, but Framemaker was complaining. Jeffery Zeldman had just given a big talk on style sheets and XML, so we hacked up an XML version of the slides, wrote a small program to parse it, then applied cascading style sheets to the very simple HTML. i put everything in CVS: http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/brian-d-foy/Builder2001/ Perlpoint, a similar program, does about the same thing the this or txt2slides does, as well, but i wanted to use XML so that we could use the data with some of our xml2mif things. :) -- brian d foy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> - Perl services for hire CGI Meta FAQ - http://www.perl.org/CGI_MetaFAQ.html Troubleshooting CGI scripts - http://www.perl.org/troubleshooting_CGI.html
