Presentations with Pylize (Linux.com) [LWN.net]

Presentations with Pylize (Linux.com)

Posted Jan 2, 2006 22:21 UTC (Mon) by rknop (guest, #66)
Parent article: Presentations with Pylize (Linux.com)

I used magicpoint once upon a time.

I really like the idea of text-based presentation software, since I generally like the idea of text based everything, but...

...I fear that I've completely fallen in love with OpenOffice.org Impress for presentations, and use that for everything. Since I generally make illustrations with OpenOffice.org draw, it's convenient for me. I *can* now import postscript into OOo draw (as native objects, not as a single monolithic object), more or less, and while the results aren't ideal, it sort of works.

It bugs me that most of the world uses the term "PowerPoint presentation" when they really mean "computer presentation." It's a Kleenex/tissue thing, complete with my feeling like there is a gross gummy greenish yellowish substance being spread around.

However, in this day and age, if I were forced to go to a text-based alternative, I suspect I'd just make my slides in LaTeX and export them to PDF. Or, something, and export them to PDF. But I haven't really seriously thought about text based presentation software in a few years, since I started seriously using OOo Impress, and stopped using MagicPoint.

-Rob

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Presentations with Pylize (Linux.com)

Posted Jan 3, 2006 14:36 UTC (Tue) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]

From the comments here, I think I'll try Latex at some point. Latex beamer was also recommended previously by some friends. I don't think I'll move away from text-files though. I do want eye-candy, but it takes second place to being able to do my work in emacs.

Presentations with Pylize (Linux.com)

Posted Jan 5, 2006 15:09 UTC (Thu) by vonbrand (subscriber, #4458) [Link]

LaTeX + beamer + xemacs (comes with AUC-TeX here), then run pdflatex. Easy enough to use for simple stuff, and can be used to create stunning presentations. As a bonus, most of the more exotic LaTeX stuff works too, and it is even possible to create a paper and presentation from the same source. It is simple to change the theme of the presentation.

MagicPoint has its nice features, but its page format is too rigid for my needs (or I haven't been able to find the right docu...). Besides, it made quite a mess with some Latin-1 text (yes, some of us do need to go futher than plain ASCII), so I gave up.

For some reason, I've never managed to create anything more than very basic bullet-pointed lists with Power Point or any of the WYSIWYG packages, OOo Impress included. Must be some permanent damage from using text interfaces too much...