[HN Gopher] Show HN: Slipshow - A presentation tool not based on...
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       Show HN: Slipshow - A presentation tool not based on slides
        
       Author : panglesd
       Score  : 184 points
       Date   : 2024-05-29 08:12 UTC (14 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | donalhunt wrote:
       | This immediately reminded me of the "infinite" blackboards we had
       | in some university lecture theatres such that you could just
       | revolve the board surface and keep claiming new writing space
       | (you could also write at a consistent level - no bending /
       | stretching).
       | 
       | Something like this:
       | https://www.ragandbonebristol.com/curiosities-1/vintage-wils...
        
         | panglesd wrote:
         | Very cool! I had never seen something like that!
         | 
         | Sometimes, I used the analogy of a big papyrus roll (like this
         | one: https://pgi-shop.de/en/papyrus-roll-20-x-80-double/) to
         | explain what is Slipshow. But your analogy is much better!
        
         | dtjohnnymonkey wrote:
         | When I was in college they would use a transparency projector,
         | but instead of transparency pages, there would be a roll with a
         | crank that you would turn to advanced the roll. You would get
         | the same effect as slipshow.
        
           | DowagerDave wrote:
           | ...and if they went too fast the hand smudges and wrapping
           | would make previous content indecipherable when they rolled
           | it back :)
        
       | jaysonelliot wrote:
       | What would be the advantages of using Slipshow for a presentation
       | over Miro or FigJam?
        
         | panglesd wrote:
         | I don't know Miro or Figjam very well, but I would say that:
         | 
         | - You can write a Slipshow presentation in Markdown, which can
         | be more convenient than in those collaborative whiteboards
         | (depending on the person): the source file is plain text. -
         | Slipshow is made for presentations, so it is themed for that:
         | the usual ratio for the screen, blocks such as
         | example/theorem/definition, titles, ... - It is easy in
         | Slipshow to reveal new content/go to a new position by simply
         | pressing the "right arrow" key. - The output from Slipshow is a
         | single file that you can view offline, send to your audience,
         | ...
         | 
         | There might be more differences. For sure, those tools are
         | different and adapted to a purpose, or a style of presenting.
         | For some kind of presentations, Miro and Figjam might be much
         | better than Slipshow!
        
       | SigmundurM wrote:
       | Looks cool!
       | 
       | It reminds me a lot of Prezi (https://prezi.com/)
        
       | mrbluecoat wrote:
       | I worry this model could lead to a "wall of text" rather than
       | forcing the presenter to be concise, speak to the concepts, and
       | rely more heavily on images. The format is good for academic
       | lecture scenarios but I'd probably just use Jupyter, as noted by
       | others.
        
         | panglesd wrote:
         | Yes, clearly this is not for every usecase.
         | 
         | I think math lectures often need quite some text support, they
         | are the reason I created Slipshow.
        
           | DowagerDave wrote:
           | The timing is super important. Writing on a chalk/whiteboard
           | or overhead takes time, which is required to absorb the
           | content. Hitting the right timing and cues with this approach
           | seems like it would take a lot of practice, which isn't a
           | deal breaker, though I believe the 2 biggest problems with
           | most presentations is too much/too fast content, and not
           | enough practice and this approach might make those both
           | harder, not easier.
        
         | hamasho wrote:
         | I get that it's usually seen as bad practice to write down all
         | the points and read from the slides, but honestly, I like that
         | style sometimes. My monkey brain gets distracted easily, and I
         | often lose track. Having detailed agendas displayed on the
         | screen helps me follow along better.
        
           | senkora wrote:
           | I especially like it for reading the slides without the
           | video. Oftentimes, the slides for a presentation will be
           | available but a video recording will not be, and having all
           | the information on the slides makes it easier to learn from
           | those presentations.
           | 
           | Of course, the "correct" way to do this would be with
           | "speakers notes", but those seem to often be stripped off of
           | archived presentations for whatever reason.
        
       | ebalit wrote:
       | Very cool! It reminds me of Prezi! https://prezi.com
       | 
       | I did an old experiment on a scrollable whiteboard with replay
       | that I built after watching a khan academy style video and
       | wanting to scroll to back to a formula without pausing the audio.
       | This makes me want to dig it back ^^
        
         | verdverm wrote:
         | Prezi lost me a PhD co-advisor, this person only liked
         | traditional slide formats. In retrospect, this was a good thing
         | to not have this person oy board. I used it pretty close to
         | traditional slides, but they could not be made happy unless it
         | was powerpoint... Separately, I did have a lot of fun making a
         | Prezi to explain how GPUs worked for another class, which went
         | over swimmingly for a different audience.
         | 
         | I ended up using reveal.js for my defense slides because the 2D
         | slide grid allows you to go deep on a subject and keep the main
         | flow clean.
        
       | h1fra wrote:
       | Nice!
       | 
       | > When using traditional slides, you are given a rectangle of
       | white space to express your thought. When this rectangle is full,
       | you have no other choice than erasing everything, and start again
       | with a new white rectangle.
       | 
       | It's not entirely solving the issue though because you are
       | animating everything all the time, you barely have much time to
       | see the content
        
       | epiccoleman wrote:
       | This is a cool idea! A few years ago I did a (short) presentation
       | out of a Notion doc for some radio-related prototyping and the
       | format was a hit - scrolling works really well for certain
       | topics.
        
       | Shorel wrote:
       | Reminds me of Prezi, a lot more than it reminds me of Jupyter
       | notebooks.
       | 
       | However, as someone who prefers to create PDF slides using LaTeX
       | instead of PowerPoint, I completely prefer a scriptable tool
       | instead of a web-based tool.
        
         | beardedwizard wrote:
         | This. It's notebooks as presentations and I'll argue there is
         | nothing about slides that explicitly prevents you from taking
         | this visual approach, but for the case where you want less
         | flexibility it could make sense.
        
       | ghaff wrote:
       | I like it. Slides are the right approach for a lot of things but
       | writing on blackboards and overheads had their own benefits that
       | just scrolling a document doesn't really replicate.
       | 
       | As others have noted, you probably need to be cautious about just
       | creating a wall of text but I can definitely see its uses.
        
       | 8organicbits wrote:
       | The markdown to presentation approach is great. You can manage
       | your slide (or slips) as code giving you history, offline
       | collaboration, pull requests, etc. I don't think you can do that
       | with most other presentation tools. I've used Marp [1] for
       | traditional slides, and wrote a GitHub template repo that outputs
       | the Marp HTML to GitHub Pages [2]. Similar workflows should be
       | possible for Slipshow.
       | 
       | [1] https://marp.app/
       | 
       | [2] https://github.com/ralexander-phi/marp-to-pages
        
         | panglesd wrote:
         | Thanks for the link, and the idea! Definitely a github action
         | to automatically publish your Slipshow presentation on push
         | would be a great workflow! (I'll open an issue for that!)
        
         | jasonpeacock wrote:
         | IA Presenter creates slide decks from markdown:
         | 
         | https://ia.net/presenter
        
         | lukaslukas wrote:
         | I see a huge markdown fan! I'm on the same page! We're building
         | an entire ecosystem for markdown slides for the same reason.
         | 
         | The same design for all slides in the same workspace, a hosted
         | version for non-developers, each slide has its own public url
         | for easy slide playback, and more ...
         | 
         | Try if you are interested in slidepicker.com (beta)
        
         | Onawa wrote:
         | Also, Quarto to reveal.js is an amazing pipeline, and ties in
         | well with the rest of the Quarto ecosystem meaning that you can
         | reuse content from other mediums more easily.
        
       | klysm wrote:
       | Great idea! I think this is a really great way to handle
       | especially mathematical expositions.
        
       | alabhyajindal wrote:
       | Amazing! Excited to try it out!
        
       | ljouhet wrote:
       | Amazing work! Tutorial:
       | <https://slipshow.readthedocs.io/en/latest/tutorial.html>
        
       | mariocesar wrote:
       | Nice! I do something similar with Dropbox Paper in presentation
       | mode and also with Jupyter notebooks with the presentation
       | feature. Of course, without all the extra nice features this has.
        
       | rvba wrote:
       | Couldnt the same be done in powerpoint?
       | 
       | If you send it to someone to read it later, do they have to wait
       | for all the animations to load? That sounds frustrating.
        
       | vzaliva wrote:
       | I think it's a very nice concept, but sometimes when you present,
       | you have to use other people's computers, and I am wondering if
       | it's possible to generate a PDF from this and use it for
       | presentations?
       | 
       | My second thought is that something like this could be made as a
       | LaTeX package, similar to Beamer. For scientists, there are many
       | benefits to using LaTeX for presentations.
        
         | tomtheelder wrote:
         | If I'm understanding it correctly, I think it renders your
         | presentation to an html file that you can just open in a
         | browser. I assume the effects and transitions are all powered
         | by embedded JS. So it should be portable.
        
       | esafak wrote:
       | One problem with this format is that it sacrifices referrability.
       | But I commend you for rethinking the existing format.
        
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       (page generated 2024-05-29 23:01 UTC)