[HN Gopher] Show HN: MarkShow - Create Slideshows with Markdown
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       Show HN: MarkShow - Create Slideshows with Markdown
        
       Author : motyar
       Score  : 189 points
       Date   : 2021-04-25 07:59 UTC (15 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (mark.show)
 (TXT) w3m dump (mark.show)
        
       | kostarelo wrote:
       | Excellent project! I like the playground.
       | 
       | A while ago I made https://presentador.dev/ which was the same
       | concept, write MD and produce an HTML based presentation.
       | 
       | Eventually I figured that I don't want to open my editor every
       | time I wanted to create a presentation, so I made
       | https://presentador.app/. It's like Slides.com but more
       | opinionated. It's still under development but usable to create a
       | simple presentation and new features are coming soon!
        
       | goodpoint wrote:
       | Asciidoc would be better.
        
       | MarcScott wrote:
       | If you're an Emacs user then I highly recommend
       | https://github.com/yjwen/org-reveal
        
       | jrm4 wrote:
       | For the same thing, I use https://zim-wiki.org and its built in
       | slide exporter. This allows me to keep my content in the same
       | "notebook" for a nice all-in-one experience. It uses the "S5"
       | system, which, I don't know how well that's been maintained, but
       | the CSS was easy enough to modify.
        
       | kissgyorgy wrote:
       | This is very nice when you are willing to write basically code
       | for your presentation, but nothing beats https://slides.com in
       | productivity. It is the SaaS of the creator of Reveal.JS. I
       | usually just make a monthly subscription when I need to make a
       | new presentation, otherwise you can keep everything, just can't
       | create new presentations. Basically "pay when you use it", very
       | fair business model, worth every penny!
        
         | bachmeier wrote:
         | Might be a wonderful product, but seriously, $14/month for
         | slides with custom CSS? Edit: And once you stop paying, it
         | looks like you drop down to a free plan that inserts ads in
         | your presentations.
        
         | the_arun wrote:
         | What are the benefits of slides.com over Google slides which is
         | free?
        
         | carlosperate wrote:
         | Thanks for sharing! What would be the main advantage of this vs
         | something like Google Slides?
        
           | niels_bom wrote:
           | Reveal.js is open source.
           | 
           | I'm a tech school teacher and we version control all our
           | Reveal.js slides in Markdown, sharing styles and certain
           | images.
        
           | rectang wrote:
           | The reveal.js file format is HTML, an open standard, and will
           | still be readable decades from now.
           | 
           | Proprietary apps like Google Slides, I have to continually
           | assess whether their file format is closed or has recently
           | switched to being closed -- because it is in the interest of
           | the company to lock in its users and exploit network effects.
        
             | richardfey wrote:
             | > The reveal.js file format is HTML, an open standard, and
             | will still be readable decades from now.
             | 
             | I don't think the javascript part is future-proof. Any
             | client side UI rendering logic is tightly integrated with
             | browsers' rendering quirks..
        
               | rectang wrote:
               | That's true, although to some degree the separation of
               | semantics from styling in HTML/CSS/JS means that the
               | structure of the document will be preserved. And at least
               | HTML is a text format! How much can you recover from a
               | proprietary binary format, when the app's not around any
               | more? At best somebody has to reverse engineer it, and it
               | could change in all sorts of undocumented ways between
               | versions of the app.
        
         | kostarelo wrote:
         | I've been working on https://presentador.app for a while now.
         | It's like slides.com but more opinionated and the goal is to
         | let it make the presentation for you. Let me know what you
         | think. It's still under development but its usable and new
         | features are coming soon! Thank you
        
           | beshrkayali wrote:
           | Looks interesting, but you need a "new" button.
        
             | kostarelo wrote:
             | Added it, thanks :)
        
       | siikanen98 wrote:
       | Nice job! It's been a little daunting to write the HTML for
       | reveal.js for quite some time and I'm not really a fan of any GUI
       | editor either. This seems perfect for scratching up a neat little
       | presentation really fast for a meeting or something alike. Thank
       | you!
        
       | praash wrote:
       | I've seen a few other implementations of MD slides before. This
       | is the first one that really clicks for me by having all the
       | features I need. Thanks for sharing!
        
       | ngrilly wrote:
       | Is there a tool like this one able to automatically reduce text
       | font size to fit everything on the slide?
        
       | alborzb wrote:
       | This is great! I normally quickly jot notes from meetings and
       | calls in .txt files, this seems a great way for me to visualise
       | them after. Useful for my usecase
        
       | yesenadam wrote:
       | Looks nice! I will recommend it to friends. I laughed when I saw
       | the "non-evil purpose only" in the license.[0]
       | 
       | [0]
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Crockford#%22Good,_not...
        
         | Hackbraten wrote:
         | Thanks for the warning.
         | 
         | That kind of license is needlessly vague. Why would I even use
         | such software if there's no reliable way to tell whether I'm
         | using it legally?
        
       | mrkramer wrote:
       | I think this should be commercialized as an alternative to
       | Microsoft PowerPoint and Google Slides.
        
         | cube2222 wrote:
         | Deckset is a commercialization of this idea. (And I really like
         | to use it)
        
       | a_c wrote:
       | I faintly remember there was a project called slidify.
       | https://github.com/ramnathv/slidify The last update was several
       | years ago. Was it no longer maintained? How does it compared with
       | MarkShow?
        
       | oefrha wrote:
       | Looks nice. Related, if you already have Pandoc installed, you
       | can get single markdown file => slideshow with Reveal.js (which
       | the showcased site is based on) for free with
       | pandoc -s -t revealjs slides.md -o slides.html
       | 
       | You can choose other implementations too, like good old Slidy:
       | pandoc -s -t slidy slides.md -o slides.html
        
         | johnx123-up wrote:
         | Another option is PRESENTA Lib
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25313347
        
       | entropie wrote:
       | I first was like "not another one", but this is actually really
       | well thought and nice. Speakers view is very nice.
        
       | Qahlel wrote:
       | ctrl+D is used to bookmark on firefox. the page kept deleting
       | lines with the same shortcut.
        
       | taklamundak wrote:
       | It seems awesome, but we need to find out the actual reason.
        
       | ekianjo wrote:
       | In the same vein there is Xaringan for R
       | https://github.com/yihui/xaringan
        
       | stakkur wrote:
       | Here's a a similar tool that's been around for a while and works
       | great: slidewriter.io
        
       | eulenteufel wrote:
       | HedgeDoc is a collaborative Markdown editor that also has
       | Reveal.js integration. It is free software (AGPL-3.0)
       | 
       | https://demo.hedgedoc.org/slide-example?both
        
       | joeblau wrote:
       | I want this built into notion.
        
       | gwenzek wrote:
       | Personally I'm a very keen on Markdeep: https://casual-
       | effects.com/markdeep/
        
       | wolfpack_mick wrote:
       | Slightly off topic but does anyone know a webbased slide editor
       | that has responsive layout built in? Something like Indesign's
       | liquid layout feature? There's so much happening in this space
       | and yet everyone sticks to fixed desktop format.
        
       | encryptluks2 wrote:
       | Now if we can just get proper mindmapping in Markdown. I've tried
       | all the libraries I could find and while they are pretty neat
       | they still lack linking and other things like you'd get from
       | XMind.
        
         | brumar wrote:
         | I sync my .xmind with .md files using homemade python scripts.
         | Lately I went the extra mile to produce reveal.js friendly mds.
         | Very handy. I did not gather enough energy to open source this
         | stuff. But this comment made me realize this pain point I have
         | with Xmind might be more common than I thought.
        
         | benrbray wrote:
         | I've had trouble understanding the use case for mindmapping
         | software, so I'd be curious to hear what you use Xmind for! I
         | feel like I'd have to constantly fight with the layout to
         | prevent my diagrams from turning into a big spaghetti mess. For
         | most of the demos on their website, a simple nested list seems
         | just as effective at communicating the same information.
        
       | grindv1k wrote:
       | Went looking a bit for something I could host myself. This looks
       | promising to me: https://github.com/adamzap/landslide
        
       | toomanyducks wrote:
       | Similarly, there's a suckless tool called sent:
       | 
       | 0: http://tools.suckless.org/sent/
        
       | geraldbauer wrote:
       | FYI: The slideshow (S9) command line tool (packaged up as a ruby
       | gem) is a classic (10+ years old) evergreen, see
       | http://slideshow-s9.github.io/ For slide templates supported
       | (incl. reveal.js) see http://slideshow-templates.github.io
        
       | neturkas wrote:
       | I have been using https://marp.app/ and its VSCode extension,
       | looks similar to https://mark.show/, but all on your local
       | editor.
        
         | jFriedensreich wrote:
         | came here to say the same, marp with the VSCode extension is
         | just exceptional. markdown files in git with one click pdf
         | export and super fast as you type previews as well as
         | customizations with css or extensions are just what fits so
         | many workflows for dev presentations.
        
         | lf-non wrote:
         | +1 for marp. Tried it a few months ago and it has now become my
         | defacto choice for presentations.
         | 
         | One particularly great side-effect of being based on VSCode is
         | that not only you can create presentations in VSCode, you can
         | also present them within VSCode. This works pretty great for
         | code-reviews etc. because you can split the editor and have the
         | code (directly from your project) on one side and the
         | presentation on the other, and easily switch back and forth or
         | zoom into the presentation whenever needed using keybindings
         | that you are already familiar with.
        
       | guessmyname wrote:
       | For macOS users, Deckset is excellent (and native) -
       | https://www.deckset.com
        
         | terhechte wrote:
         | Self-Promotion: if you'd like iPad support and more features,
         | I've been working on such an app for the last 2 years:
         | 
         | https://hyperdeck.io/
        
           | RBerenguel wrote:
           | Awesome, one of the pain points I have with Deckset is not
           | having an iOS version. The other one is exporting to an HTML
           | compatible mode (to keep animated GIFs... animated). I wrote
           | my own tool (https://github.com/rberenguel/haskset) to
           | leverage Pandoc and make a reveal.js export look like
           | Deckset, but that's not ideal (basically, I don't have
           | feature parity and any time I use a new feature I have to
           | implement it...).
        
         | Hackbraten wrote:
         | Wish it supported SVG files though.
        
       | refactor_master wrote:
       | Is there a similar tool that actually addresses the "death-by-
       | PowerPoint" paradigm where people just paste slabs of text into
       | slides and call it a presentation? Something where I can easily
       | insert pictures and control the order of animations, while not
       | fiddling around too much with the layout.
       | 
       | Something like plantuml, but for slides?
        
         | kissgyorgy wrote:
         | Yes, https://slides.com from the creator of Reveal.JS. It's
         | insanely productive, you can just drag and drop things, 1-click
         | for animations and ordering and has other features I never seen
         | with any other presentation tool. I was able to create some of
         | my presentations in 10-20 minutes!
        
         | terhechte wrote:
         | I've been working on something like that for the past two
         | years. It uses markdown, but extends it with a bit of syntax to
         | set templates, layouts, and animations
         | 
         | https://hyperdeck.io/
        
         | kostarelo wrote:
         | I've been working on https://presentador.app/ for quite a while
         | now. Still under development and but is usable to create a
         | simple presentation and new features are coming soon! Thank you
        
       | nxpnsv wrote:
       | ShowDown would have been a cooler name.
        
         | ujuj wrote:
         | Showdown already exists! http://showdownjs.com/
        
           | nxpnsv wrote:
           | Of course :D
        
       | sandreas wrote:
       | Nice work :-) I have a side project with the same goal. Some
       | ideas:                 - Once started, no way back? How about
       | double-click?       - Background images would be nice, custom
       | CSS?       - How about loading URL contents (e.g. from github)
       | - Auto agenda / TOC?       - Support for Math, Charts, Code?
       | - Export as single html?       - Localstorage history?       -
       | Standardized GH repo layout `markshow` for listing, loading and
       | showing all my presentations?
       | 
       | This is basically part of the feature list, I would like to
       | implement for my personal tool.
        
         | pickledish wrote:
         | You should check out the "advanced demo", it shows the tool
         | actually does support a lot of the items you've mentioned (like
         | background images, code, latex, and loading markdown from a
         | URL):
         | 
         | https://mark.show/https://mark.show/demo.md#
        
         | hippospark wrote:
         | You may try Yu Writer, it supports bg images, toc, math,
         | charts, code and general slide show functions.
         | 
         | https://hemashushu.github.io/yu-writer.site/
        
       | normaler wrote:
       | I have been using sent from sucklessat university.
       | 
       | https://tools.suckless.org/sent/
       | 
       | Really simple and it has support for PNG with farbfeld.
        
         | gkbrk wrote:
         | Seconding "sent", I've basically prepared the presentation of
         | my dissertation in a few hours using this and it looked great.
        
       | doersino wrote:
       | Very nice!
       | 
       | A while ago, I've built something similar on top of the in-
       | browser Markdown-plus-diagrams renderer Markdeep:
       | https://github.com/doersino/markdeep-slides
       | 
       | Aside from things like custom themes and pop-out-able presenter
       | notes, it supports printing to PDF via the browser's built-in
       | print functionality - perhaps that's something you could look
       | into. (Maybe you have, but my phone's browser just doesn't like
       | it.)
        
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       (page generated 2021-04-25 23:01 UTC)