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

If you change style sheets or templates to add fetures, please mail changes to me so that I can include them in next distribution

Logos: Made with PLies 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:

Examples

PLies currently supports following templates:

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

shows release date, PLies version and size of archive
2001-04-20 1.0
9714   
2001-05-06 1.1
10979   
2001-05-15 1.2
16663   
2002-04-18 1.3
17673   
2002-04-18 1.4
20886   
2002-09-11 1.5
30735   
2003-04-18 1.6
45596   

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