pydozeoff

pydozeoff is a web application written in Python that generates web-based presentations.

As a Linux user, I don't have access to so called "professional" presentation softwares such as Apple Keynote or MS PowerPoint. OpenOffice Impress used to be my first choice, but I gave up using it since it's a memory/processor hog for medium-sized presentations.

After a little research, I came across a wonderful tool called S5. It was a perfect fit, except for the one-big-fat-presentation-html thing and the lack of syntax highlighting.

This is what I'm trying to solve with this project. So, in other words, pydozeoff is just a web-based presentation engine for programmers.

Features

• Dynamic slides with Jinja2 template engine
• Syntax highlighting with Pygments
• Each-slide-is-a-file approach
• Play nice with version control systems
• Configurable slide directory structure with support for nested subdirectories
• Uses S5 template model by default, but you can easily make it compatible with virtually any web-based presentation engine

Dependencies

• Python 2.5+
• Jinja2 template engine
• Pygments syntax highlighter
• Flask microframework

Usage

First, run easy_install -U pydozeoff to install the latest stable release.

Starting a presentation

Run pydozeoff -c "<PRESENTATION_NAME>" to start a new presentation. This will create a presentation_name folder in the working directory. This is what you'll find there:

media/

All files placed here are served by the web server under the /media/ namespace. For example, you can access company_logo.png at http://host:port/media/company_logo.png.

slides/

This is where you put the slides for your presentation. You can nest them in as many subdirectories (or sections) as you want.

themes/

This is where you put the theme used by your presentation. This directory also holds a HTML template ready for use with S5.

slideshow.py

Slideshow configuration module.

Serving a presentation

Use the pydozeoff command to serve the presentation:

$ cd my_presentation
$ pydozeoff

This command starts a web server which can be accessed at http://localhost:8080/. Use -p <PORT> if you want to use a different port number:

$ pydozeoff -p 9090

To start the presentation in debug mode:

$ pydozeoff -d

This allows you to modify presentation's settings - and slides - and see the results right away, without the need to restart the web server. It also prints full stacktrace messages in case of errors.

All the previous commands will only work if you run pydozeoff from the presentation root directory. Use -s <DIRECTORY> if you need to start pydozeoff from a different directory:

$ pydozeoff -s /home/user/presentation/

Run pydozeoff -h to see all options available.

Configuring a presentation

The file slideshow.py contains detailed instructions on how to configure the presentation, but here's a common workflow:

$ cd /my/workspace
$ pydozeoff -c my_presentation
$ cd my_presentation
$ pydozeoff -dp 8080

Point the browser to http://localhost:8080 to see a plain HTML document. It looks that way because we haven't configured a theme yet.

To do that, download S5 and extract the ui/default directory to themes. Open the file slideshow.py and modify the THEME setting to "default":

THEME = "default"

Refresh the browser to see the changes. Ok, now we are ready to add some slides to our presentation.

First, create a file slides/first.html that looks like this:

<h1>{{ TITLE }}</h1>

<h3>{{ SPEAKER }}</h3>
<h4>{{ COMPANY }}</h4>

<div class="handout">
    <p>Slide notes.</p>
</div>

Also, modify the SLIDES setting in slideshow.py:

SLIDES = slides(
    simple("first.html"),
)

It's also a good time to modify the presentation name, speaker name, and so on:

TITLE    = u"Are we living in the Matrix?"
SPEAKER  = u"Morpheus"
COMPANY  = u"Nebuchadnezzar"
LOCATION = u"Planet Earth (what's left of it)"
DATE     = u"2199-07-22"

Refresh the browser again to see the changes. Repeat these last steps for the next slides.

Fine tunning a presentation

S5 configuration parameters

S5 provides a couple of configuration parameters which you can change in slideshow.py:

CONTROL_VIS  = "hidden"    # "visible" or "hidden"
DEFAULT_VIEW = "slideshow" # "slideshow" or "outline"

Syntax highlighting

To highlight source code snippets in your slides, just put the code inside a {% code "LANGUAGE" %} block:

<h1>Some Python code</h1>

{% code "python" %}
    class MyClass(object):
        def __init__(self): pass

    my_obj = MyClass()
{% endcode %}

To configure the syntax highlighter behavior (see Pygments documentation for more information):

SYNTAX_HIGHLIGHT_OPTIONS = {
    "style": "emacs",
}

Dividing slides into sections

For medium to large-sized presentations, you might want to separate slides into sections:

SLIDES = slides(
    simple("first.html"),       # Points to: slides/first.html
    section("intro",
        bullets("points.html"), # Points to: slides/intro/points.html
    ),
)

Feel free to nest as many sections as you want.

Passing extra variables to a slide

Sometimes you don't want to hardcode data inside a slide. In those cases, just pass them as keyword arguments to the slide definition:

SLIDES = slides(
    simple("first.html", var1="value1"), # In your slide: {{ var1 }}
)

If you want to make data available to all slides, just create a setting for that:

VAR1 = "value1" # In your slides: {{ VAR1 }}

Extending the template engine

Jinja2 allows you to extend the template engine with custom extensions, filters and tests (see Jinja2 documentation for more information):

TEMPLATE_ENGINE_EXTENSIONS = [
    "pydozeoff.template.ext.code",       # Provides: {% code %}
    "pydozeoff.template.ext.code_style", # Provides: {% code_highlight_css %}

    "my.custom.extension.here",
]

TEMPLATE_ENGINE_FILTERS = {
    "my_filter": my_filter_function, # In your slide: {{ VALUE|my_filter }}
}

TEMPLATE_ENGINE_TESTS = {
    "my_test": my_test_function,     # In your slide: {{ VALUE is my_test }}
}

Template inheritance

Jinja2 supports template inheritance, which allows you to build a base "skeleton" template that contains all the common elements of your slides and defines blocks that child templates can override.

For example, create a file themes/slide.html:

<h1>{% block title %}{% endblock %}</h1>

{% block content %}{% endblock %}

<div class="handout">
    {% block handout %}{% endblock %}
</div>

In your slides:

{% extends "themes/slide.html" %}

{% block title %}Slide title{% endblock %}

{% block content %}
    Slide content
{% endblock %}

{% block handout %}
    Slide notes
{% endblock %}

Changing the default directory structure

Modify the following settings to change the way a presentation is organized:

SLIDES_DIR = "slides"
MEDIA_DIR  = "media"
THEMES_DIR = "themes"

Future plans

I don't have any. Sorry.