Why did I decide to make PLies?

and my personal views

What do I like?

• XLSies output is just great
• SlideMaker simple input html format
  
• Solutions which are Perl-based

What I don't like?

• Java-based XML solutions
• dependency on external Perl libs

What do I have?

• an itch (think as Raymond's-like itch)
• many slides made in SlideMaker
• need for something better

From XLSies to PLies

Basically, I just took style sheet from XLSies and made everything else based on SlideMaker.

In the process, I rewrote most of SlideMaker perl code and added error checking.

Additional benefits:

• split TOC page to multiple parts of 10 entries
• add better support for <blockquote> and <strong> from Mozilla composer
• add nesting of TOC if slide titles are the same (use sub-title)
• added progress bar for number of slides
• separation of perl code from design (using templates)

Distribution

under GPL licence

You may find latest (probably unstable!) distribution on:
http://www.rot13.org/~dpavlin/presentations/PLies.tar.gz

Current stable version is 1.6 (see goodies!)
For changes examine: ChangeLog, NEWS or CVS
freshmeat page

Logos: GIMP file is in distribution. Please link to http://www.rot13.org/~dpavlin/presentations/XLSies_to_PLies/

TODO

Things that PLies needs

I will keep here a list of things that needs to be done (do you have some spare time?)

• Make some animation using JavaScript (but, using some of JavaScript compatibility libraries...) in progress, using 1k.js
• Make a ftp client (using Net::FTP) to upload presentation to server (make ftp)

Topics for discussion:

• Use RelativeLayers to adopt to different screen sizes?

Examples

PLies currently supports following templates:

• default
• SlideMaker look-a-like (called w3c)
• Blue and orange look (called blue)
• Black and yellow round look (called round)
• Podium look-a-like (called podium)

Need more? Make them!

Goodies

There are several goodies which make PLies (from version 1.6) even beter than plain html:

• keyboard navigation (using space or n for next slide and back space or b for previous slide and t for table of contents.
• support for class="delayed" which will be displayed after user press space on slide (to support showing of content one-by-one)
• support for site navigation (using link ref=)
• support for arbitrary perl code inside presentation using <perl>...</perl> tag (which can be used to create graphs as in history page)

Credits

PLies is based on:

• W3C SlideMaker by
  • Stephan Montigaud - stephan@w3.org
  • Pierre Fillault
  • Bert Bos
• XSLies by
  • Sami Lempinen - lempinen@iki.fi
• Text::FastTemplate version 0.91 or higher by
  • Robert Lehr - bozzio@the-lehrs.com
• hindent by
  • Paul Balyoz - pab@domtools.com
• Podium, Web-based slideshow presentation system written in PHP from which comes podium template by
  • Ken A L Coar - Ken.Coar@Golux.Com
• pylize is PLies clone written in pyton which had keyboard navigation using JavaScript which served as basis for PLies implementation and is written by
  • Christopher Arndt - chris.arndt@web.de

All bugs in current implementation of burst.pl are however mine.

History

comparison of archive size

This bar graph is created using perl_include/draw_bar.pm included in distribution.