[HN Gopher] Presentation Slides with Markdown
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Presentation Slides with Markdown
        
       Author : sadeshmukh
       Score  : 235 points
       Date   : 2025-04-28 01:21 UTC (21 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (sli.dev)
 (TXT) w3m dump (sli.dev)
        
       | nairadithya wrote:
       | For more like this: Check out marp[0], presenterm[1] and
       | reveal.js[2]
       | 
       | [0] https://github.com/marp-team/marp [1]
       | https://github.com/mfontanini/presenterm [2]
       | https://revealjs.com/
        
         | terhechte wrote:
         | I'd also like to throw my own app into the mix
         | 
         | http://hyperdeck.io
        
           | porridgeraisin wrote:
           | For iPad and Mac only, to save others a click.
        
           | xz18r wrote:
           | This looks cool, but is it still maintained? Changelogs
           | mention iOS 14 only 5 dot releases ago.
           | 
           | https://docs.hyperdeck.io/changelog.html
        
         | bArray wrote:
         | My first time seeing presenterm, very cool. I will seriously
         | consider using this in the future.
        
         | ekianjo wrote:
         | Quarto is also nice and builds on top of reveal.js for slides
        
         | NicuCalcea wrote:
         | There's also the closed-source iA Presenter[0], which makes
         | some great-looking slides. It's paid and Mac-only though.
         | 
         | I use Quarto with reveal.js and love it. I teach and
         | particularly like the multiplex plugin[1] to sync the
         | presentation on multiple devices. My students can open it on
         | their laptops and I control the changing of the slides, but
         | they can click on links or interact with the presentation
         | themselves.
         | 
         | [0] https://ia.net/presenter [1]
         | https://revealjs.com/multiplex/
        
           | stavros wrote:
           | I really like these presentation-as-code tools in principle,
           | but in practice I find that they can be a bit limiting.
           | However, I haven't used them enough for this to be anything
           | more than a general sense. Does anyone have an opinion on
           | this?
        
             | ghaff wrote:
             | I tried out reveal.js for a while but, especially with
             | Google Slides coming in, I found it limiting and
             | increasingly the collaboration component of Google Slides
             | was becoming more and more important to me at the time.
        
             | NicuCalcea wrote:
             | I rarely need anything more than bullet points or an image
             | in my presentations, so I don't find them limiting.
             | However, most of these allow arbitrary HTML/JS/CSS, so I
             | wouldn't say they're that limiting. I occasionally include
             | iframes, for example.
             | 
             | The big downside for me is you don't have easy pixel-level
             | control over layout like you do in PowerPoint or Google
             | Slides. Even changing font size, for example, is a little
             | clunkier. I hear some people also miss being able to draw
             | diagrams and flowcharts.
        
             | bluGill wrote:
             | Limits can be good. I - like most people put too much on
             | slides. Simple slides are good.
             | 
             | the reason complex tools can do so much as each feature is
             | needed in some obscure case. However because it is there
             | presenters are tempted to use it when they should not.
        
         | chombier wrote:
         | pandoc has a reveal.js backend which I use it to build my
         | slides from markdown (with a few ad-hoc inline css tweaks)
        
       | doubtfuluser wrote:
       | What is the advantage over the reveal.js / quarto eco-system. I'm
       | using that for my lectures, and am really happy about it
       | (especially since it's pretty easy to make an llm add automatic
       | speaker notes and timing information)
        
       | ephimetheus wrote:
       | What always disqualifies these projects for me is the fact that
       | they need to use a headless browser to export to PDF. PDF export
       | is the primary feature I need from these, and it's a shame the
       | export mechanism is still this slow and unreliable.
        
         | petepete wrote:
         | This is why I still use beamer and pandoc.
        
         | maegul wrote:
         | Yea.
         | 
         | Having intentionally stayed away from going down the PDF rabbit
         | hole, but now confronting it again recently ... what's the deal
         | with how sparsely populated the space is with solid and
         | (relatively) light weight rendering solutions/back-ends?
         | 
         | Am I missing something or am I right in thinking that there's a
         | kinda pandoc/FFmpeg shaped hole in the document tooling space
         | that no one wants to (or can't) fill? Where tex and chrome
         | based solutions are arguably just too heavy for a number of
         | needs but all we really have?
        
           | ephimetheus wrote:
           | Exactly, I would've hoped someone could come up with a way to
           | render markdown directly into a PDF, without roundtripping
           | via tex and having to handhold the styling process in the way
           | that's required now.
        
           | Maken wrote:
           | The problem is that Markdown is not really a markup language,
           | since it only defines the content and structure, but has no
           | way to specify _how_ it will be displayed. To go from content
           | (Markdown) to rendered presentation (PDF) you need a proper
           | markup languaje (HTML /Tex) to be able to specify its layout.
        
             | LordDragonfang wrote:
             | The reason it's hard to render straight from Markdown isn't
             | because it's not a markup language like html - because
             | Markdown _is_ just syntactic sugar for a subset of html.
             | Because of that, it 's usually easier to just use the
             | abundant html tooling to render it. The problem is that
             | _html_ needs CSS to render nicely - and any tool used to
             | render CSS+HTML is almost by definition a browser engine.
        
         | jm2dev wrote:
         | I found with that revealjs slides can be exported to pdf via
         | their tools menu, and print it. It worked on Firefox. True that
         | it's a manual step. But no need to rely on a headless browser
         | as soon as you don't want to script it.
         | 
         | https://quarto.org/docs/presentations/revealjs/presenting.ht...
        
       | inodb2000 wrote:
       | I'm using slidev as my main software for presentations on a
       | mostly msoffice based company. I can export to pptx format (it's
       | screenshot image based though) which makes my colleagues happy
       | for some reason... I'm using the integrated mermaid support to
       | add simple architectures schemas or simple database driven
       | charts.
        
       | RandomWorker wrote:
       | The company behind the minimalist writer is writer had a
       | presenter app called iA Presenter. https://ia.net/presenter
       | 
       | I've had it for a while and it's awesome to write all the notes
       | and stuff in markdown. They also provided a good amount of
       | content on how to write good presentations.
       | 
       | Looking at these two offerings the iA presenter tries to look
       | great out of the box straight away versus this one where you have
       | to mess with the layout. It helps you focus on the content. I've
       | done a few presentations with iA presenter and it's been well
       | received -- note I'm a good speaker but not a great slide maker.
        
         | _glass wrote:
         | Why the past tense? It looks great, will use it. I am still
         | using iaWriter. Love that software.
        
         | kstrauser wrote:
         | I love Presenter. When I used it recently, it was the first
         | time someone described one of my talks as "beautiful".
         | 
         | Its docs also work hard to sway you away from walls of text.
         | It's probably a good idea to download Presenter even if you
         | don't want to use it, just so you can read its presentation
         | advice.
         | 
         | It also lets you export your presentation plus speaker notes to
         | a PDF later to distribute to your audience.
        
         | rolha-capoeira wrote:
         | been using this for years, still great
        
       | sugarkjube wrote:
       | Whenever I go to a tech conference, I see slide after slide
       | filled with a wall of text, or in the best case 3 to 5 bullet
       | points with text only.
       | 
       | A picture says more than a thousand words.
       | 
       | As much as I'd like to use a simple markdown based tool to create
       | my presentations, most of these appear to come short regarding
       | visuals (1).
       | 
       | Look at the 2007 iPhone introduction - thats how you use visuals
       | to deliver a message.
       | 
       | Going from bullets to visuals is definitely not easy, and while
       | I'm not as brilliant as Steve Jobs, I always give it my best
       | shot. And a supporting tool makes it a lot easier.
       | 
       | (1) if anyone knows about a md-based slide creator supporting
       | good visuals, I'm open to suggestions.
        
         | socalgal2 wrote:
         | I don't know if Markdown based slides are good or bad but Apple
         | has plenty of bullet point type presentations in their WDC
         | videos
         | 
         | Like here's one
         | 
         | https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2023/10056/
        
           | ghaff wrote:
           | The style for big conference keynotes and breakouts is often
           | different (and often should be). And, as mentioned elsewhere,
           | the production values and effort that goes into keynotes is
           | not practical for everything else--though the level of effort
           | different companies put in varies.
        
         | prepend wrote:
         | I have this discussion quite a bit with colleagues who
         | specialize in communication.
         | 
         | I want to convey technical and scientific material. My
         | presentation isn't to motivate a billion people to buy an
         | iPhone. My presentation is meant to inform 50-100 people to
         | learn a new technique. And the slide deck is markers for where
         | they can follow up later for detail and references.
         | 
         | I too see presentations with walls of text. I go to academic
         | and scientific conferences. This is helpful to me. I like it
         | better than posters. I don't want to go to a conference and
         | have a bunch of Steve Jobs (or more likely Elizabeth Holmes)
         | giving one word per slide presentations.
         | 
         | I also don't have 100 people working on my slide deck. It's
         | just me. I don't need a TED talk.
         | 
         | I wish people would recognize the different purposes and
         | audiences for presentations.
        
           | malshe wrote:
           | The inside joke among academicians is that our slides have
           | wall of text because we make them on the flight while going
           | to the conferences! Our presentations tend to be bland
           | because the audience is reading off the slides and ignore
           | what the speaker is saying. That's why for our doctoral
           | students we make it mandatory to present at least twice
           | internally before presenting to external audiences.
           | Otherwise, they have these giant tables copied from the
           | manuscript and pasted on the slides, which most people can't
           | read without binoculars.
        
           | harrall wrote:
           | Yeah but people will put 40 lines of code on a slide and read
           | through it, expecting that it will explain the underlying
           | concept while I'm trying to parse a ton of code in front of
           | my eyes.
           | 
           | Most of the time that I am presenting technical material, I
           | spend it on explaining the concepts through short
           | descriptions, hand-draw illustrations or diagrams.
           | 
           | If there's code to show, it will be smaller snippets
           | interspersed between those slides. If attendees want to deep
           | dive into 100 lines of code, it is best that they do it on
           | their own time at their own pace after I send out the
           | materials.
           | 
           | I actually talk about code but this applies to non-technical
           | presentations too. Yeah, it's also not a sales presentation
           | but don't wall-of-text me.
           | 
           | Explain concepts to me.
        
         | ghaff wrote:
         | I sometimes use text-only or text-mostly presentations. And
         | sometimes graphics-mostly presentation work fine too. My
         | typical presentation is probably somewhere in the middle with
         | the caveat that I'm not presenting at academic conferences and
         | the level of technical content varies.
        
         | jbaber wrote:
         | I have the same opinion as you and use remarkjs a lot at work.
         | It obeys the markdown rule that you can devolve to real html
         | and I handle my images with real img tags and styling.
         | 
         | I'd honestly prefer using straight html for the whole
         | slidedeck, but want my slides to be user friendly for others
         | who may inherit/fork them.
        
       | sshine wrote:
       | Reminds me of:
       | 
       | https://slides.com
        
         | ghaff wrote:
         | Yes, it's more or less reveal.js based as I understand it. I
         | tried it for a while a number of years back along with some
         | other folks at my company. But the company largely standardized
         | on Google Slides and I went in that direction too.
        
       | cavenditti wrote:
       | I wrote my quick and very opinionated solution for this:
       | https://github.com/cavenditti/quickslides
       | 
       | Just a little Python to generate a Typst file and then render it.
       | 
       | It won't fit everyone but for me it's quick, flexible enough and
       | creates good-looking slides.
        
       | ako wrote:
       | What is nice of the text/code based presentation tools is that
       | you can easily have them be generated by an LLM: I've used it to
       | generate a revealjs based presentation to explain a code base,
       | including svg based (sequence) diagrams to illustrate the flow,
       | based on the LLM (windsurf) inspection of the code base.
        
       | disintegrator wrote:
       | The most amusing thing I found about Go is that they built a
       | presentation framework similar alongside the language. It's got
       | some additional syntax on top of markdown but the documentation
       | to use it can readily fit in an LLM's context window. I'd say
       | it's good enough for many simple presentations.
       | 
       | https://pkg.go.dev/golang.org/x/tools/present
        
         | everybodyknows wrote:
         | Interesting. I'm wondering about its future. Still nominally
         | pre-release, v0.32, and with alternative syntaxes supported.
         | 
         | > in legacy present slides/sections use "*" instead of "##"
        
       | dingensundso wrote:
       | I usw pandoc to create slides from markdown: ```pandoc -t beamer
       | slides.md -o slides.pdf``` And if you prefer HTML+JS slides,
       | pandoc can do that too: https://pandoc.org/MANUAL.html#slide-
       | shows
        
       | kubb wrote:
       | For those using Obsidian: https://help.obsidian.md/plugins/slides
        
       | vanderZwan wrote:
       | Here's my neo-Luddite take on this. Slides with support for notes
       | in a synchronized second window in just 371 bytes of minified
       | javascript, some HTML and some CSS:                   let
       | a=[...document.getElementsByClassName("slide")]
       | .map((a,b)=>[a,"slidenote"==(b=a.nextElementSibling)
       | ?.className?b:a]),b=0,c=0,d=()=>a[b][c]
       | .scrollIntoView(),e=new BroadcastChannel("s"),
       | l=a.length-1;d();e.onmessage=({data:a})=>{c^=a.c,
       | b=a.b,d()};document.addEventListener("keypress",
       | ({key:f})=>{b+=(f=="j")-(f=="k");b=b<0?0:b>l?l:b;
       | c^=f=="n";e.postMessage({c,b});d()});              div.slide,
       | div.slidenote {             height: 100vh;             width:
       | 100vw;             /* Other slide styling options below */
       | ...             ...         }              <div class="slide">
       | Anything in here is one slide         </div>         <div
       | class="slidenote">           (optional) Anything in here is
       | a note for the slide above         </div>
       | 
       | You can trivially use the HTML and CSS inside markdown, so any
       | markdown parser that generates HTML is now an ultra-lightweight
       | slides generator.
       | 
       | For a deeper explanation, see Dave Gaur's original minslides[0]
       | and my own presentation on how I added note-support to it and
       | golfed the JS code[1].
       | 
       | [0] https://ratfactor.com/minslides/
       | 
       | [1]
       | https://nbd.neocities.org/slidepresentation/Slide%20presenta...
        
       | __mharrison__ wrote:
       | I'm using Jupyter and typst for my slides these days. (Which
       | depends on the audience.)
       | 
       | I was going to write tooling to convert markdown to typst, but
       | typst is so easy that I haven't bothered. Of course Jupyter has
       | markdown support, but I'm normally running code when presenting
       | with it (did 20 hours last week).
        
       | rectalogic wrote:
       | I use a small patch [1] to revealjs [2] hosted on GitHub pages
       | [3], just point it to a markdown gist
       | 
       | [1]
       | https://github.com/hakimel/reveal.js/compare/master...rectal...
       | 
       | [2] https://github.com/hakimel/reveal.js
       | 
       | [3] https://gist-reveal.rectalogic.com/
        
       | alienreborn wrote:
       | I have been using https://www.deckset.com/ for the same for years
       | and have no complaints.
        
       | resiros wrote:
       | This looks very useful to get llms to generate slides. It would
       | be nice if it had an llm.txt I can add as a context directly.
       | Maybe an MCP server too
        
       | gitroom wrote:
       | pretty cool seeing all these approaches for making slides with
       | code, makes me kinda curious whether the tool or the workflow
       | matters more in the end - you think the actual structure of a
       | talk really changes based on how easy the tool is?
        
       | Moggie100 wrote:
       | I'd just like to throw https://hedgedoc.org/ into the mix here,
       | for anyone looking for a collab + notes + presentation selfhosted
       | thing.
       | 
       | I've been trialling it for a little while and loving the whole
       | experience so far.
        
       | precompute wrote:
       | For Emacs, Org-Present and epresent work well.
        
       | dmje wrote:
       | I use Obsidian. That way my slides are just notes in my existing
       | knowledge base - searchable, linkable, etc
        
         | daheza wrote:
         | Do you have good AI integration into obsidian?
         | 
         | So far I write a rough draft in obsidian copy into chatgpt /
         | claude then copy back into obsidian. I'd love a way in app to
         | work in more a fluid way. Much like how Notion has its simple
         | AI actions (improve this writing, etc).
        
       | malshe wrote:
       | I like these projects but in my experience the four most common
       | products people use for making slides are Google Slides, Canva
       | (mostly by undergraduate students), PowerPoint, and Keynote. The
       | common thread is the ease of use. So it's difficult to see why
       | someone would switch to another product.
        
         | maccard wrote:
         | It's definitely niche, but one of the best presentations I've
         | ever seen was done in godot [0]
         | 
         | One of my coworkers copied our PowerPoint theme, built a super
         | basic presentation mode with transitions and used the engine
         | for interactive demos live in the slides running the code.
         | 
         | [0] https://godotengine.org/
        
           | Imustaskforhelp wrote:
           | that's some madlad ability.
           | 
           | I am not sure how he managed to do it, I tried building a
           | very simple game in godot and it took me way too much to
           | figure out the physics etc. part, though that might be
           | because I was making a simple shooting game like space
           | invaders but with red and green squares and ability to rotate
           | ...
           | 
           | Using godot to do this does seem to me pretty cool since
           | godot is more interactive than lets say pygame but I am also
           | still not sure how he managed to do it in godot, I would love
           | it if your co worker could write a blog post explaining how
           | he did so in godot!
           | 
           | I once wanted to create a presentation tool in ebitengine in
           | golang just for fun and oh boy I failed miserably hard.
           | 
           | I genuinely like this idea. I had heard of this idea of using
           | godot for unconvential usecases a long time ago in some HN
           | post but seriously , while writing this post, I realized that
           | your co worker could have also actually made a way to run
           | that powerpoint tool in wasm since godot can compile to wasm
           | and its kind of insane that you can get android,ios,web,every
           | single desktop support while still not being electron or
           | heavy on javascript.
           | 
           | I did find this https://github.com/GDquest/godot-
           | presentations which is pretty interesting though I wish that
           | some kind of video tutorial could go in hand with this
           | because I am not that level of familiar with godot to
           | actually run this
        
       | manuhabitela wrote:
       | Used this in the past and it's my favorite tool to make
       | presentations now. It's really the most dev friendly tool I
       | managed to try, and I guess I tried a few.
       | 
       | The most interesting thing for me is that you can write your own
       | Vue components for your most specific use cases. Makes it easy to
       | write some rather interactive slides. And it saves you from
       | having to learn some presentation-specific software, some motion
       | design or video making tool. Just quickly code your way through
       | everything.
       | 
       | Quite refreshing to build slides that way.
        
       | spudlyo wrote:
       | I keep seeing new projects that implement things that Emacs and
       | Org mode already do incredibly well. I guess it's a testament to
       | how steep the Emacs learning curve is, or perhaps how ugly the
       | defaults look.
       | 
       | You have ox-beamer, which lets you write your slides in Org-mode,
       | and export using LaTeX and Beamer, which look pretty great. You
       | can also use org-reveal, or org-re-reveal to make some visually
       | very attractive presentations with reveal-js. And finally, if you
       | want to actually have the presentation run inside Emacs, you can
       | use dslide[0] which looks really nice, and leans heavily on org-
       | babel.
       | 
       | [0]: https://github.com/positron-solutions/dslide
        
         | LordShredda wrote:
         | There's definitely something to be said about emacs being stuck
         | in time. However, everything under the sun is just a half-baked
         | clone of something emacs already had, except for text-editing
         | :^)
        
           | looofooo0 wrote:
           | Just use e-vi-l-mode for text
        
         | packetlost wrote:
         | Steep learning curve and it's sorta an all or nothing
         | investment. I don't particularly care for emacs despite having
         | tried several times in earnest. IMO a tool that requires full
         | (or at least significant) buy-in on an ecosystem isn't a great
         | tool and warrants an alternative. I'd rather see good agnostic
         | tools get made and then wrapped.
        
       | darkhorse13 wrote:
       | Slidev is awesome. I'm working on something like this but for
       | forms: https://forms.md
        
       | mentalgear wrote:
       | very useful! is custom / tailwind css also supported ?
        
       | ajstarks wrote:
       | FYI, I use decksh [1][2] a DSL (aka "little language") for decks,
       | information displays and charts decksh generates deck[3] markup
       | that is rendered as PDF, SVG, or PNG.
       | 
       | [1] https://speakerdeck.com/ajstarks/decksh-a-little-language-
       | fo...
       | 
       | [2] https://speakerdeck.com/ajstarks/decksh-object-reference
       | 
       | [3] https://github.com/ajstarks/deck/blob/master/README.md
        
       | skeptrune wrote:
       | I'll have to try it and see if it's better than Marp next time
       | I'm building a presentation.
        
       | outlore wrote:
       | I've tried out a few of these, and iA Presenter seemed to be the
       | only one that can handle arbitrary long text by dynamically
       | changing the font size. However I wish you could specify a floor
       | and ceiling for the font size so that fewer lines of text didn't
       | look comically big. Do folks have recommendations for markdown
       | slide software that can strike this balance? I remember slidev
       | would cut off text when it became too long
        
       | seanhunter wrote:
       | I used to use https://github.com/webpro/reveal-md , which is a
       | very thin layer on reveal.js.
        
         | p4bl0 wrote:
         | I use something like this, indirectly.
         | 
         | HedgeDoc [1] (a markdown collaborative pad tool) also uses
         | reveal.js to build presentation slides from markdown pads. It's
         | quite easy to use and works very well. Also it supports LaTeX
         | for math and code highlighting.
         | 
         | The presentation mode is able to manage a dual screen interface
         | so the speaker can have a timer, see the next slide, and some
         | private notes if necessary.
         | 
         | Very cool!
         | 
         | [1] https://hedgedoc.org/
        
       | tiffanyh wrote:
       | Isn't this inherently flawed?
       | 
       | If markdown can be used to create your slides, it seems like
       | you're incorrectly using slides as a medium ... when instead, you
       | should be writing a memo.
       | 
       | Note: I'm not hating on the product. Just asking a higher level
       | meta question.
        
         | TheTaytay wrote:
         | (I'm not affiliated with this project.)
         | 
         | I like using Markdown for all sorts of "human and machine
         | readable" tasks these days. Text-only formats are really,
         | really nice, and Markdown has formatting-for-display built in,
         | so using it as a text format for defining slides seems like a
         | natural extension to me.
         | 
         | Maybe you're saying, "You shouldn't use slides. You should be
         | writing a memo!" I guess that is a different take from my
         | assumptions which was: "Sometimes I want to make slides. I'd
         | like them to be easy to author and edit in text. Maybe Markdown
         | would be nice..."
        
       | theodorewiles wrote:
       | Whoever writes the tool that can Actually Make a legitimate
       | microsoft office powerpoint slide from text will make a lot of
       | money.
       | 
       | From what I have seen most of these tools need to do more user
       | research on how powerpoint slides actually look like in practice.
       | 
       | There's a lot of "you're doing it wrong, show don't tell, just
       | keep the basics on the slide" but the people that use powerpoint
       | to make $$$ make incredibly dense powerpoint materials that serve
       | as reference documents, not presentation guides (i.e. they are
       | intended as leave-behind documents that people can read in
       | advance)
       | 
       | Presentations are also quite hard because:
       | 
       | 1. It must "compile to" Powerpoint (it must compile to powerpoint
       | because your end users will want to make direct edits and those
       | end users will NOT be comfortable in markdown and in general will
       | be very averse to change) 2. Powerpoint has no layout engine 3.
       | Powerpoint presentations are in fact a beautiful medium in which
       | VISUAL LAYOUT HAS SEMANTIC MEANING (powerpoint is like medieval
       | art where larger is more important)
       | 
       | If anyone wants to help me build an engine that can get an LLM to
       | ACTUALLY make powerpoints please let me know. I am sure this is a
       | lot harder than you think it is.
        
         | jacobdelong wrote:
         | Do you have one of these information dense powerpoints as a
         | reference? Is there data visualization embedded in the slides?
         | I don't know anything about this so I'm curious.
        
           | theyinwhy wrote:
           | It's consultants doing everything in PPT. Imho it is very,
           | very annoying.
        
           | umeshunni wrote:
           | These are the slide decks that McKinsey and BCG consultants
           | leave behind after a 6 month contract. The deck is the work
           | product that the consulting firm got paid 7 or 8 figures for.
           | 
           | They are typically 60+ pages slides on something like go-to-
           | market strategy or organizational realignment that the
           | C-level at the hiring firm hired them to do and will forward
           | around to his reports and teams to implement.
           | 
           | Each slide is handcrafted to have a punchy title and be self
           | contained, dense, with links to references and data sources.
           | There's a hefty appendix section so that when someone asks a
           | "what about X?" question, there's a slide in there about
           | alternatives considered and a data-centric reason on why it
           | wasn't or shouldn't be pursued.
        
           | tsumnia wrote:
           | I teach the math behind AI, so my slides are very dense. Not
           | "text heavy", but elaborate - some animations, graphics with
           | arrows pointing to more graphics, 3-4 slides on just
           | explaining what all the symbols in a math equation mean, and
           | a worked example.
           | 
           | I would never be able to design my slides if I used a
           | Markdown to PPT converter.
        
           | lelandbatey wrote:
           | Here's one potential example of a moderate complexity slide
           | deck generated by serious professionals :
           | https://media.kalzumeus.com/complex-
           | systems/334925792-Shorti...
           | 
           | That is a PDF copy of the actual pitch deck Deutsche Bank
           | used for a proposed trade to take advantage of the 2008
           | housing financial crash by "Shorting Home Equity Mezzanine
           | Tranches" (an incredible and lucrative prediction they made
           | back in 2007, when the PDF was authored). The real meat and
           | potatoes starts on page 6, but every page after the
           | disclaimer could be put on screen as a slide in a powerpoint.
           | 
           | Note how nearly every slide is a diagram with title and
           | potentially a caption. Each diagram is annotated with custom
           | annotations explaining the concepts at play, requiring a ton
           | of annotations. There's charts, block diagrams, process
           | workflows, tables, and more. A minority of the pages are
           | text-only with bulleted lists. This is an ultra high value
           | artifact and very little of it would have benefited from a
           | markdown->slides automation. What makes it amazing is the
           | sheer volume and detail of very specific information, only
           | replicable via tremendous elbow grease.
        
         | peanball wrote:
         | I think the use case would be limited to a handful of users
         | (slight hyperbole).
         | 
         | The average user is content enough with using plain PowerPoint
         | and won't bother with Markdown. People using Markdown are more
         | on the "you're doing it wrong, put the basics on the slide"
         | side.
         | 
         | The people that make nice backgrounds for their talk, sometimes
         | with a word or two, won't get there with a text based tool
         | either.
         | 
         | People that use LaTeX, markdown or some other text to slides
         | tool are few and far between.
        
       | s-xyz wrote:
       | Love the concept, am a big fan of these kind of solutions. I can
       | see it also being a use case for non-technical teams to ensure
       | some kind of design consistency. Sales can be horrible in
       | presentations and slides.
        
       | celie56 wrote:
       | The tool looks nice. I've used revealjs for this use case before
       | so I was happy to see your comparison documentation:
       | https://sli.dev/guide/why#comparisons
        
       | aborsy wrote:
       | Latex with Beamer is amazing. I haven't made slides with
       | Microsoft and Apple software for a long time. Do they make better
       | slides?
        
       | Acrobatic_Road wrote:
       | Suprised nobody here ha mentioned sent.
        
       | setheron wrote:
       | Not bad but I ended up writing a lot more CSS/HTML than I thought
       | I would. Made me wonder if i should just write reveal.js instead.
       | 
       | You can see it here: https://github.com/fzakaria/learn-nix-the-
       | fun-way https://fzakaria.github.io/learn-nix-the-fun-way/1
       | 
       | I liked putting the commit SHA on the title slide :)
        
       | DyslexicAtheist wrote:
       | the minute a CoolNewThing uses npm I'm out. Not gonna install
       | hundreds of vulnerable dependencies for CoolNewThing
        
       | swyx wrote:
       | what a great landing page explaining the basic concepts. kudos
       | whoever worked on that.
        
       | juanpabloaj wrote:
       | I tried something similar some years ago, maybe 10 years ago or
       | more, finally I didn't find a way to make it profitable ... and
       | lost myself.
       | 
       | https://github.com/juanpabloaj/platon
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2025-04-28 23:01 UTC)