What is PresTiMeL ? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ PresTiMeL is a tool, to create presentations from a simple textfile. For each slide, PresTiMeL will create one (or a set of) HTML-file(s), which can be shown in a Web browser of your choice. Cascading Stylesheets (CSS) are used, to define how big a text-item has to be, which font and color it should have, etc. So you will need a Web browser, which supports CSS, like Netscape 4.* or Internet Explorer 4.*. Example presentation : ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ After compiling and installing the program (see the INSTALL-file), change to the directory "example" and type "prestimel example". The presentation will be written to HTML-files and you can start browsing with "01.html" (the first slide) or "index.html" (the table of contents). Start PresTiMeL with the commandline-option "-h" for a list of all commandline-options. For example : try "prestimel -tplasma example" to make the example-presentation use the plasma-theme. Advantages of prestimel : ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ * You can write your presentation in an editor of your choice. You don't have to take care of graphics- and layout-stuff. So you can concentrate yourself on the contents of your presentation. * For the layout and look-alike, you just select a theme. So if you don't like one theme, just try another one. * The presentation itself is independend from platform and Web browser. All you need is a browser which supports Cascading Stylesheets. Disadvantages of prestimel : ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ * It is not possible to create such fancy transition-animations like you may know from Powerpoint. Well, I think this kind of stuff just diverts from the presentation, so I don't think, this is really a disadvantage :-) Of course it is possible, to play around with JavaScript and Dynamic-HTML. But this stuff depends on the Web browser, so I decided to use only standard CSS-features which will be understand by both browsers. * It is not possible to change the slide just by pressing space. You have to click on a "previous"- or "next"-button, which will be shown on each slide. The HTML 4.0 standard supports this kind of shortcut. But until now, no Web browser has implemented this feature yet :-( * There is no possibillity to draw some lines on the slide to mark some important parts or to do something like that. * The presentation will only work for one screen-resolution (800x600 or 1024x768), because it is not possible to scale the output of the HTML-slides.
