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Show HN: Create Slides with Plain Text

play.presenta.cc

124 pointsabusedmedia46 comments

This looks like it's going in the same direction as Deckset (https://www.deckset.com/) and reveal-md (https://github.com/webpro/reveal-md) – neat. I love the former (just works really well for me) and would really want to like the latter (open source! no license needed, collaboration-friendly, customizable), but it makes me fight my tools just a bit to much. Part of which is intentional, of course – the point of these tools (for me) is to not get sucked into a handcrafted slides rabbit hole, because they resist me very strongly if I try, but things like autoscaling lots of text on a single slide just have to work (couldn't find a decent-looking way to do this in reveal-md without magic – works nicely in Deckset).

Yours looks like it could fill that gap (featureful yet easy to use), though (on first glance, I'll admit) it still appears to be kinda limited. I can't figure out how to exit presentation mode, I'd prefer to have somewhat more explicit slide boundaries (e.g. using the Markdown "---" separator), so I can have multi-line slides with paragraphs, plus I could throw my Deckset markdown slides at it and have them work with relatively minor changes. I think the mix of Markdown and HTML in the examples are a bit confusing, maybe it would be better to stick to just Markdown?

I couldn't figure out how to have an image and text side-by-side (I like to do this in Deckset to have e.g. a vertical process diagram on the left and the most important remarks/caveats on the right). Other things I personally am missing are multi-line code snippets, text on top of an image background (ideally desaturating/blurring the image for readability, Deckset does that well), and speaker tools.

What's there is really lovely, though. I love how super snappy it is, the themes look pretty good, very nice and minimal. It's mostly very straightforward to use and already has a bit of polish, which is neat at what looks like a pretty early stage. I think this looks really good and promising!

and marp

Thank you to take the time for this comment. The nature of the library (which the tool is built on) allows many different input formats, indeed, I'm working on a markdown/yaml version that supports additional features such as what you suggested. Stay tuned!

My favorite plain text presentation tool is `sent` [1]. It is even more minimal but works surprisingly well (at least for me). Javascript-free but only for X11.

[1] https://tools.suckless.org/sent/

^ "but only for X11"

This is really neat – it basically can't be made any simpler, yet encourages best practices!

A while ago, while on the lookout for a somewhat more fully-featured web-based presentation tool than this, I ended up building something similar-ish on top of the Markdown renderer Markdeep:

https://github.com/doersino/markdeep-slides

That's nice, thanks. Also, I didn't know Markdeep, I like it.

Hi there, here my first attempt to create a tool using Presenta Lib, my open source presentation library. Any feedback very appreciated.

Would be nice if I can vertically swipe up the slide instead swiping horizontally in vertical slide.

Good point! Thanks

Nice work, I've been looking for something just like this.

For me it would be great to be able to export to PDF or even ODP/PPT

Thanks, export features might be added in the near future

This is great!

What's the easiest way to go from a textual description in a file (like the left-hand side) to a generated html/js presentation? Without this online editor, I mean.

So great and love to detail (just the subtle smooth flashing when you finished the presentation), great color scheme and the best: just the essentials and no nonsense features.

Thanks! You got the point :)

I'm using Chrome on Windows 10, every time a textual slide shows up, the text shrinks/sharpening a bit. I feel uneasy. Is that on purpose?

This sounds like an issue that needs to be solved. Thanks for reporting it.

Great idea! Does anyone know if something similar exists for e-learning (ie sending SCORM data at the end of the presentation)?

Interesting, do you have some example to figure out the kind of data?

You can take a look at this: https://youtu.be/UeyIExDQqjg?t=798

Many basic elearning modules are just glorified powerpoint files. A lot of time is lost in beautifying those.

Ok, in the context of your original question, it looks you were wondering if it's possibile to 'render' SCORM data within play.presenta? If those data are HTML files it's quite possible, otherwise if that data need to be interpreted, it's another story

Disclaimer: I'm not a developer. From what I read, is seems like that the web files have to be packaged in a given structure with an XML manifest, and then you need to call the SCORM API that is implemented by the LMS you're uploading the SCORM module to. You litterally just need to call LMSInitialize() at the beginnign of the presentation, and LMSFinish() at the end.

Since many e-learning creators are not graphic designers, a tool such as the one presented here could be quite helpful.

This looks amazing! Great work. Did you write the lib from scratch?

One small thing there is no way to return to edit mode from the present mode.

Thanks. Yes, the library is completely written from scratch and it's in pure js without dependencies. To get back to the editor you need to use the back button of the browser, but, I agree, a more explicit way might be a better choice.

Another similar site https://mark.show

How does this differ from remark.js?

You can read some library reason' whys at https://lib.presenta.cc/overview/

Thanks, I'm gonna take a look.

Ha! I'd rather just use beamer and a single verbatim block for each frame.

This and a way to automatically save the slideshow to a video is all that need.

Just curious, why as video format? Wouldn't it be the same with an autoplay feature?

I can see this as a tool to create simple social media posts

in my case, it’s for digital signage screens, you can run webpages on the players, but the monitor socs are heavily optimized to play video, so it’s much more easy to distribute the content as video than as html animations.

Reminds me of swipe.to (rip)! Good job and keep up the good work!

RIP? where you got that news?

No blog updates - no updates whatsoever on social...

True, but the service is still up and running, there's must be someone behind it :)

yeah? who?

The use of sudesh bhosle is shaaba shaaba

What does shaaba/shava mean? I heard it in another song and wasn't sure if it's just made up and it was referencing 'say shava shava', or if it actually means something. Never been able to find a definition as शवा or शावा or with ष or (prompted by your comment) ब।

It's Punjabi equivalent of shaabash in Hindi. https://www.ijunoon.com/punjabi/punjabi.aspx?word=balle

Ah, thanks!

many many years ago I used to use Rabbit[0] for presentations. It used to take a different approach, rendering whole images instead of HTML, but was quite fun to use.

[0] https://rabbit-shocker.org/

I like it!

wow! game changer for me.

thanks!

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