pylize is a Python script that makes the creation of on-screen presentations a matter of a few minutes. It generates a template master document, which you can edit with your favourite text or HTML editor. The master document is then processed by pylize to generate HTML files for every slide plus a file for the table of contents. You can view the presentation with any CSS-capable webbrowser.

Introduction

What can pylize do for me?

pylize is a presentation generation tool. Among its features are:

• generates a template master document
• creates a set of HTML slides from the master document
• automatically creates the table of contents and distributes it to serveral slides if necessary
• a nice CSS driven slide layout, including logo, navigation links, progress-bar etc.
• easy navigation by accesskeys and single-key presses (through JavaScript)
• easy changing of layout through templates
• all information for a presentation in one master file, but configurable through a per-user options file
• fully localized

Getting Started

How to create a presentation

Prerequisites

• Python >= 2.x
• EmPy
• PIL (optional)

Installation

After you downloaded pylize, unpack the archive and change into the created directory, which is named something like pylize-X.Y. Choose between the two modes of installation:

• As the superuser (root): python install.py [prefix]
• As a normal user: python install.py $HOME

Creating a new presentation

1. Create a new directory for your presentation.
2. Run pylize create in the new directory. This will produce a file named all.html.
3. Edit this file to your liking. It is richly commented.
4. Rerun pylize without arguments to produce the presentation files.
5. Open the file index.html in your Webbrowser (turn JavaScript on). Voilà!

Master document structure

Master document structure

How to write slides

Everything before the first <h1> element is considered to be the abstract of your presentation. It is rendered with a heading depending on the language (i.e. 'Summary' in English) and is enclosed in a <div class="abstract"> block. You can change it's appearance in the stylesheet.

Every slide should have a title and, optionally, a subtitle. You define them with a <h1> element, resp. <h2>. The input file (master document) is split into slides at every occurence of an <h1> element. This means, for the headings on your slide you have to use the <h3> element.

Let's see an example:

This will produce the following slide...

Master document structure

My first slide, or: «Look, Ma, no hands!»

Please note:

Although the subtitle can appear anywhere between two <h1> elements, you should place it immediately after the preceding <h1> element, just to make things more readable.

Master document structure

Another Slide

Some formattings

You can use the usual HTML formatting tags on your slide, just remember that the text should be viewable on the screen without scrolling.

You can have:

• bulleted lists
• links to other documents
• italic, bold and coloured text
• other fonts and sizes
• and much more ...

Master document structure

Testing delayed text

Master document structure

Where to go from here?

Look into the template master document to understand the overall document structure. You have to edit a few meta tags in the header of this HTML file to set the title and subtitle of your presentation, the author, date and a few more things. These settings are accompanied by explanatory comments so you should find your way round quickly.

You can also see the master document for this presentation. As you can see, it also serves as a condensed summary of your presentation.

These examples should get you started. If you want to learn more about HTML, search the web for 'HTML tutorial'. If you know German, I'd recommend SELFHTML by Stefan Münz.

Now you probably can't wait to lay your hands on pylize...

Download

Where to get pylize

You can download the latest version of pylize from this location:

For questions, comments or suggestions you can write the author at:

By the way, pylize is released under the GPL, which basically means, you are free to use, modify and distribute the software, as long as you make your changes available under the GPL too.

Credits

pylize is a Python-clone of:

PLies <http://www.rot13.org/~dpavlin/presentations/XLSies_to_PLies/> (sic!)
by Dobrica Pavlinusic

which is in turn inspired by:

XSLies <http://lempinen.net/sami/xslies/>
by Sami Lempinen

and:

W3C SlideMaker <http://www.w3.org/Talks/slidemaker/YYMMsub/>
by Stephan Montigaud, Pierre Fillault and Masayasu Ishikawa

Thank you for your attention!