I usw pandoc to create slides from markdown:
```pandoc -t beamer slides.md -o slides.pdf```
And if you prefer HTML+JS slides, pandoc can do that too: https://pandoc.org/MANUAL.html#slide-shows
The most amusing thing I found about Go is that they built a presentation framework similar alongside the language. It's got some additional syntax on top of markdown but the documentation to use it can readily fit in an LLM's context window. I'd say it's good enough for many simple presentations.
What is nice of the text/code based presentation tools is that you can easily have them be generated by an LLM: I’ve used it to generate a revealjs based presentation to explain a code base, including svg based (sequence) diagrams to illustrate the flow, based on the LLM (windsurf) inspection of the code base.
What always disqualifies these projects for me is the fact that they need to use a headless browser to export to PDF. PDF export is the primary feature I need from these, and it’s a shame the export mechanism is still this slow and unreliable.
I found with that revealjs slides can be exported to pdf via their tools menu, and print it. It worked on Firefox. True that it’s a manual step. But no need to rely on a headless browser as soon as you don’t want to script it.
Having intentionally stayed away from going down the PDF rabbit hole, but now confronting it again recently … what’s the deal with how sparsely populated the space is with solid and (relatively) light weight rendering solutions/back-ends?
Am I missing something or am I right in thinking that there’s a kinda pandoc/FFmpeg shaped hole in the document tooling space that no one wants to (or can’t) fill? Where tex and chrome based solutions are arguably just too heavy for a number of needs but all we really have?
The problem is that Markdown is not really a markup language, since it only defines the content and structure, but has no way to specify how it will be displayed. To go from content (Markdown) to rendered presentation (PDF) you need a proper markup languaje (HTML/Tex) to be able to specify its layout.
Exactly, I would've hoped someone could come up with a way to render markdown directly into a PDF, without roundtripping via tex and having to handhold the styling process in the way that's required now.
What is the advantage over the reveal.js / quarto eco-system. I’m using that for my lectures, and am really happy about it (especially since it’s pretty easy to make an llm add automatic speaker notes and timing information)
Whenever I go to a tech conference, I see slide after slide filled with a wall of text, or in the best case 3 to 5 bullet points with text only.
A picture says more than a thousand words.
As much as I'd like to use a simple markdown based tool to create my presentations, most of these appear to come short regarding visuals (1).
Look at the 2007 iPhone introduction - thats how you use visuals to deliver a message.
Going from bullets to visuals is definitely not easy, and while I'm not as brilliant as Steve Jobs, I always give it my best shot. And a supporting tool makes it a lot easier.
(1) if anyone knows about a md-based slide creator supporting good visuals, I'm open to suggestions.
The company behind the minimalist writer is writer had a presenter app called iA Presenter. https://ia.net/presenter
I’ve had it for a while and it’s awesome to write all the notes and stuff in markdown. They also provided a good amount of content on how to write good presentations.
Looking at these two offerings the iA presenter tries to look great out of the box straight away versus this one where you have to mess with the layout. It helps you focus on the content. I’ve done a few presentations with iA presenter and it’s been well received — note I’m a good speaker but not a great slide maker.
I’m using slidev as my main software for presentations on a mostly msoffice based company. I can export to pptx format (it’s screenshot image based though) which makes my colleagues happy for some reason… I’m using the integrated mermaid support to add simple architectures schemas or simple database driven charts.
I usw pandoc to create slides from markdown: ```pandoc -t beamer slides.md -o slides.pdf``` And if you prefer HTML+JS slides, pandoc can do that too: https://pandoc.org/MANUAL.html#slide-shows
For those using Obsidian: https://help.obsidian.md/plugins/slides
For more like this: Check out marp[0], presenterm[1] and reveal.js[2]
[0] https://github.com/marp-team/marp [1] https://github.com/mfontanini/presenterm [2] https://revealjs.com/
Quarto is also nice and builds on top of reveal.js for slides
My first time seeing presenterm, very cool. I will seriously consider using this in the future.
I'd also like to throw my own app into the mix
http://hyperdeck.io
This looks cool, but is it still maintained? Changelogs mention iOS 14 only 5 dot releases ago.
https://docs.hyperdeck.io/changelog.html
For iPad and Mac only, to save others a click.
The most amusing thing I found about Go is that they built a presentation framework similar alongside the language. It's got some additional syntax on top of markdown but the documentation to use it can readily fit in an LLM's context window. I'd say it's good enough for many simple presentations.
https://pkg.go.dev/golang.org/x/tools/present
What is nice of the text/code based presentation tools is that you can easily have them be generated by an LLM: I’ve used it to generate a revealjs based presentation to explain a code base, including svg based (sequence) diagrams to illustrate the flow, based on the LLM (windsurf) inspection of the code base.
What always disqualifies these projects for me is the fact that they need to use a headless browser to export to PDF. PDF export is the primary feature I need from these, and it’s a shame the export mechanism is still this slow and unreliable.
I found with that revealjs slides can be exported to pdf via their tools menu, and print it. It worked on Firefox. True that it’s a manual step. But no need to rely on a headless browser as soon as you don’t want to script it.
https://quarto.org/docs/presentations/revealjs/presenting.ht...
Yea.
Having intentionally stayed away from going down the PDF rabbit hole, but now confronting it again recently … what’s the deal with how sparsely populated the space is with solid and (relatively) light weight rendering solutions/back-ends?
Am I missing something or am I right in thinking that there’s a kinda pandoc/FFmpeg shaped hole in the document tooling space that no one wants to (or can’t) fill? Where tex and chrome based solutions are arguably just too heavy for a number of needs but all we really have?
The problem is that Markdown is not really a markup language, since it only defines the content and structure, but has no way to specify how it will be displayed. To go from content (Markdown) to rendered presentation (PDF) you need a proper markup languaje (HTML/Tex) to be able to specify its layout.
Exactly, I would've hoped someone could come up with a way to render markdown directly into a PDF, without roundtripping via tex and having to handhold the styling process in the way that's required now.
This is why I still use beamer and pandoc.
What is the advantage over the reveal.js / quarto eco-system. I’m using that for my lectures, and am really happy about it (especially since it’s pretty easy to make an llm add automatic speaker notes and timing information)
Whenever I go to a tech conference, I see slide after slide filled with a wall of text, or in the best case 3 to 5 bullet points with text only.
A picture says more than a thousand words.
As much as I'd like to use a simple markdown based tool to create my presentations, most of these appear to come short regarding visuals (1).
Look at the 2007 iPhone introduction - thats how you use visuals to deliver a message.
Going from bullets to visuals is definitely not easy, and while I'm not as brilliant as Steve Jobs, I always give it my best shot. And a supporting tool makes it a lot easier.
(1) if anyone knows about a md-based slide creator supporting good visuals, I'm open to suggestions.
I don't know if Markdown based slides are good or bad but Apple has plenty of bullet point type presentations in their WDC videos
Like here's one
https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2023/10056/
I wrote my quick and very opinionated solution for this: https://github.com/cavenditti/quickslides
Just a little Python to generate a Typst file and then render it.
It won't fit everyone but for me it's quick, flexible enough and creates good-looking slides.
The company behind the minimalist writer is writer had a presenter app called iA Presenter. https://ia.net/presenter
I’ve had it for a while and it’s awesome to write all the notes and stuff in markdown. They also provided a good amount of content on how to write good presentations.
Looking at these two offerings the iA presenter tries to look great out of the box straight away versus this one where you have to mess with the layout. It helps you focus on the content. I’ve done a few presentations with iA presenter and it’s been well received — note I’m a good speaker but not a great slide maker.
Why the past tense? It looks great, will use it. I am still using iaWriter. Love that software.
I’m using slidev as my main software for presentations on a mostly msoffice based company. I can export to pptx format (it’s screenshot image based though) which makes my colleagues happy for some reason… I’m using the integrated mermaid support to add simple architectures schemas or simple database driven charts.
Reminds me of:
https://slides.com