[drupal-devel] author your slides with Drupal next time
Hi, Last fall, Walkah announced an S5 module in the works (http://bryght.com/node/121), which was a proof of concept, but was never actually released as far as I know. I was way too excited about the possibilities, and given that my repeated requests resulted in no code from Walkah (due to the apparent reason of not enough time), I sat down this weekend, and put together a simple module for S5 authoring with the book module. The module is now in Drupal CVS (http://drupal.org/cvs?commit=19502) I know reusing books is still not the ideal solution for slide authoring, but since only book has an outline editor in Drupal, it was the quickest to use, and I am going to have a presentation on Drupal this weekend, so I only had this much time. I have ideas for futher improvements (actually either creating a better outline editor for books, or abandoning books). Here is the README reproduced for those interested: S5 Presentation Module Suite ---------------------------- The modules in this suite are supposed to help you author and play S5 presentations. S5 is Eric Meyer's "Simple Standards-Based Slide Show System", which is based on the Opera Show format. S5 presentations work in a multitude of browsers, and also compatible with Opera Show. http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/tools/s5/ Installation requirements ------------------------- - Modules in this folder are compatible with Drupal 4.7 - S5 itself is not included. You are required to copy the contents of the 'ui' folder from your S5 download to misc/s5. That means you should have files like misc/s5/default/slides.js The s5_book module ------------------ This module allows you to play book pages as S5 presentations. Enabling this module, you will get an 'S5 Presentation' link by the side of your 'docbook export' and 'opml export' links on your book pages. This flattens your book structure, so any hierarchies will be lost. You can use hierarchies however to structure your presentation properly. Since books only allow you to distinguish 30 different page weights, if you have more slides, you need to use hierarchies to maintain proper ordering. Group your slides by topic, and give your topics starter slides. The first slide is searched for metainformation about your slides, which is injected to further slides. An example first slide is the following: <h3 class="s5-author">Name of Author</h3> <h4 class="s5-company">Company of Author</h4> <!--p class="s5-presdate">Presentation date</p> <p class="s5-location">Place, Date and time</p--> As this example shows, you will have your name and company displayed on the slide (the slide and thus the presentation title will be the first node title). Since the presentation date and location information is in HTML comments, it will not be displayed. The s5-presdate value is supposed to be something like 20050920. For more detailed information on how these values should look like, look into the S5 documentation. Other slides should contain HTML like: <ul> <li>point one</li> <li>point two</li> <li>point three</li> </ul> See the S5 documentation on what else you can use on the slides, like handout text, images, incremental display, etc. Practical usage --------------- Authoring presentations with the book module might not be the ideal solution, since it does not allow you to easily add and remove slides. For this reason, s5_book module adds an 'add book page' link to the book outline editor (look into administer >> content >> books). This way, the outline editor allows you to quickly view, add and remove slides, as well as reorder them. Possible later modules ---------------------- Since authoring slides with the book module is still not the ideal way to look at slideshow editing, there are ideas on the future direction of supporting S5 authoring. When or whether these will be implemented at all is still an open question. Contact the maintainer, if you would like to join forces. Credits ------- Thanks to Eric Meyer for this fantastic slideshow system. The s5_book module and this readme was written by Gabor Hojtsy <goba@php.net>.
gabor - thanks so much for doing this. i too have periodically bugged walkah to finish this. i'm happy to discuss improvements to the module. your writeup does a nice job of describing the current limitations. i'll be installing this on our intranet as soon as we move to 4.7. my goal will be to remove the requireemnt to put data in HTML comments. Thats not possible for normal people (i.e. don't know HTML). I'll find some way for them to complete a form instead, and have the comments outputted via a hook. idea: this module might benefit from the relations work that ber and others have started. -moshe Gabor Hojtsy wrote:
Hi,
Last fall, Walkah announced an S5 module in the works (http://bryght.com/node/121), which was a proof of concept, but was never actually released as far as I know. I was way too excited about the possibilities, and given that my repeated requests resulted in no code from Walkah (due to the apparent reason of not enough time), I sat down this weekend, and put together a simple module for S5 authoring with the book module. The module is now in Drupal CVS (http://drupal.org/cvs?commit=19502)
I know reusing books is still not the ideal solution for slide authoring, but since only book has an outline editor in Drupal, it was the quickest to use, and I am going to have a presentation on Drupal this weekend, so I only had this much time. I have ideas for futher improvements (actually either creating a better outline editor for books, or abandoning books).
Here is the README reproduced for those interested:
S5 Presentation Module Suite ----------------------------
The modules in this suite are supposed to help you author and play S5 presentations. S5 is Eric Meyer's "Simple Standards-Based Slide Show System", which is based on the Opera Show format. S5 presentations work in a multitude of browsers, and also compatible with Opera Show.
http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/tools/s5/
Installation requirements -------------------------
- Modules in this folder are compatible with Drupal 4.7
- S5 itself is not included. You are required to copy the contents of the 'ui' folder from your S5 download to misc/s5. That means you should have files like misc/s5/default/slides.js
The s5_book module ------------------
This module allows you to play book pages as S5 presentations. Enabling this module, you will get an 'S5 Presentation' link by the side of your 'docbook export' and 'opml export' links on your book pages. This flattens your book structure, so any hierarchies will be lost. You can use hierarchies however to structure your presentation properly. Since books only allow you to distinguish 30 different page weights, if you have more slides, you need to use hierarchies to maintain proper ordering. Group your slides by topic, and give your topics starter slides.
The first slide is searched for metainformation about your slides, which is injected to further slides. An example first slide is the following:
<h3 class="s5-author">Name of Author</h3> <h4 class="s5-company">Company of Author</h4> <!--p class="s5-presdate">Presentation date</p> <p class="s5-location">Place, Date and time</p-->
As this example shows, you will have your name and company displayed on the slide (the slide and thus the presentation title will be the first node title). Since the presentation date and location information is in HTML comments, it will not be displayed. The s5-presdate value is supposed to be something like 20050920. For more detailed information on how these values should look like, look into the S5 documentation.
Other slides should contain HTML like:
<ul> <li>point one</li> <li>point two</li> <li>point three</li> </ul>
See the S5 documentation on what else you can use on the slides, like handout text, images, incremental display, etc.
Practical usage ---------------
Authoring presentations with the book module might not be the ideal solution, since it does not allow you to easily add and remove slides. For this reason, s5_book module adds an 'add book page' link to the book outline editor (look into administer >> content >> books). This way, the outline editor allows you to quickly view, add and remove slides, as well as reorder them.
Possible later modules ----------------------
Since authoring slides with the book module is still not the ideal way to look at slideshow editing, there are ideas on the future direction of supporting S5 authoring. When or whether these will be implemented at all is still an open question. Contact the maintainer, if you would like to join forces.
Credits -------
Thanks to Eric Meyer for this fantastic slideshow system. The s5_book module and this readme was written by Gabor Hojtsy <goba@php.net>.
Dikini (Vlado Zlatanov) created an S5 module as well - not sure if it's in contrib or not. Might be worth talking to each other with a view to merging modules. Best regards, Robert Castelo
> Dikini (Vlado Zlatanov) created an S5 module as well - not sure if it's > in contrib or not. not yet - the book outlines is less than ideal, it was a struggle to explain authors what do they need to do, there are performance issues as well. The module can be seen at work, including the various kludges at http://conference.iproms.org Due to the authoring issues, I've frozen my slides module, until I finish open office impress presesentations import, then I will definitely revive it. >From the feedback I had a few issues have surfaced: * the outline should allow adding siblings and children * the majority of the users were very, very, very unhhappy to even cosider online authoring - thus the OOo import I'm working on atm. the performance issued mentioned earlier were related to the way book.module treats hierarchies and I had to do a lot od very crude hacks to minimise them. Vlado
>>Dikini (Vlado Zlatanov) created an S5 module as well - not sure if it's >>in contrib or not. > > not yet - the book outlines is less than ideal, it was a struggle to explain > authors what do they need to do, there are performance issues as well. > The module can be seen at work, including the various kludges at > http://conference.iproms.org > > Due to the authoring issues, I've frozen my slides module, until I > finish open office impress presesentations import, then I will > definitely revive it. I completely understand the limitations of my module's current approach, and I would not use this module to author my slides, if I would not be keen on showing off at my presentation, that I used Drupal to create it. It is after all a Drupal marketing presentation :) >>From the feedback I had a few issues have surfaced: > * the outline should allow adding siblings and children My module does add an 'add book page' (which should be something like 'add' in Drupal terms) into the outline editor, which helps a tiny bit. > * the majority of the users were very, very, very unhhappy > to even cosider online authoring - thus the OOo import I'm working on > atm. Regardless of what editor you you, you do outline authoring. In Impress, you arrange your slides with their tabs at the bottom. It is in fact harder to rename multiple slides, then what you can do with the book interface. Well it is not ideal, I must admit. > the performance issued mentioned earlier were related to the way > book.module treats hierarchies and I had to do a lot od very crude hacks > to minimise them. Hm, could you please send me your module code? I am interested in the approach. Look, my module is damn simple. I don't know how it can be made simpler without abandoding the book module interface or improving the book module interface itself. Sure, the title slide and presentation meta information could be much more easier to specify, but apart from that, other aspects are dictated by how book module works. Goba
I can always provide the code, I just don't think it is out of alpha, although it works :) If anyone is interested in helping out on the impress import, please shout loud Vlado
Gabor, this is one that I am personally interested in using. If you need help writing Administration Help for your module read this, file an issue, or ask me to do it. http://drupal.org/node/24268 Kieran On Sep 19, 2005, at 11:23 PM, Gabor Hojtsy wrote:
Hi,
Last fall, Walkah announced an S5 module in the works (http://bryght.com/node/121), which was a proof of concept, but was never actually released as far as I know. I was way too excited about the possibilities, and given that my repeated requests resulted in no code from Walkah (due to the apparent reason of not enough time), I sat down this weekend, and put together a simple module for S5 authoring with the book module. The module is now in Drupal CVS (http://drupal.org/cvs?commit=19502)
I know reusing books is still not the ideal solution for slide authoring, but since only book has an outline editor in Drupal, it was the quickest to use, and I am going to have a presentation on Drupal this weekend, so I only had this much time. I have ideas for futher improvements (actually either creating a better outline editor for books, or abandoning books).
Here is the README reproduced for those interested:
S5 Presentation Module Suite ----------------------------
The modules in this suite are supposed to help you author and play S5 presentations. S5 is Eric Meyer's "Simple Standards-Based Slide Show System", which is based on the Opera Show format. S5 presentations work in a multitude of browsers, and also compatible with Opera Show.
http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/tools/s5/
Installation requirements -------------------------
- Modules in this folder are compatible with Drupal 4.7
- S5 itself is not included. You are required to copy the contents of the 'ui' folder from your S5 download to misc/s5. That means you should have files like misc/s5/default/slides.js
The s5_book module ------------------
This module allows you to play book pages as S5 presentations. Enabling this module, you will get an 'S5 Presentation' link by the side of your 'docbook export' and 'opml export' links on your book pages. This flattens your book structure, so any hierarchies will be lost. You can use hierarchies however to structure your presentation properly. Since books only allow you to distinguish 30 different page weights, if you have more slides, you need to use hierarchies to maintain proper ordering. Group your slides by topic, and give your topics starter slides.
The first slide is searched for metainformation about your slides, which is injected to further slides. An example first slide is the following:
<h3 class="s5-author">Name of Author</h3> <h4 class="s5-company">Company of Author</h4> <!--p class="s5-presdate">Presentation date</p> <p class="s5-location">Place, Date and time</p-->
As this example shows, you will have your name and company displayed on the slide (the slide and thus the presentation title will be the first node title). Since the presentation date and location information is in HTML comments, it will not be displayed. The s5-presdate value is supposed to be something like 20050920. For more detailed information on how these values should look like, look into the S5 documentation.
Other slides should contain HTML like:
<ul> <li>point one</li> <li>point two</li> <li>point three</li> </ul>
See the S5 documentation on what else you can use on the slides, like handout text, images, incremental display, etc.
Practical usage ---------------
Authoring presentations with the book module might not be the ideal solution, since it does not allow you to easily add and remove slides. For this reason, s5_book module adds an 'add book page' link to the book outline editor (look into administer >> content >> books). This way, the outline editor allows you to quickly view, add and remove slides, as well as reorder them.
Possible later modules ----------------------
Since authoring slides with the book module is still not the ideal way to look at slideshow editing, there are ideas on the future direction of supporting S5 authoring. When or whether these will be implemented at all is still an open question. Contact the maintainer, if you would like to join forces.
Credits -------
Thanks to Eric Meyer for this fantastic slideshow system. The s5_book module and this readme was written by Gabor Hojtsy <goba@php.net>.
Gabor, this is one that I am personally interested in using.
If you need help writing Administration Help for your module read this, file an issue, or ask me to do it. http://drupal.org/node/24268
Kieran
Well, now it is quite for the geeks, since editing slides takes some more effort then what you would expect. Fist should be to make it easier, but I don't know what path to take, or if I would have the time to go on that path. It is completely unlikely that I would have time to contribute to Matt's Impress import for example :) Goba
Hi Gabor, On 20-Sep-05, at 2:23 AM, Gabor Hojtsy wrote:
Last fall, Walkah announced an S5 module in the works (http://bryght.com/node/121), which was a proof of concept, but was never actually released as far as I know. I was way too excited about the possibilities, and given that my repeated requests resulted in no code from Walkah (due to the apparent reason of not enough time), I sat down this weekend, and put together a simple module for S5 authoring with the book module. The module is now in Drupal CVS (http://drupal.org/cvs?commit=19502)
sorry to not get back to you sooner, I have been kind of heads down, and not keeping fully up on my email :( Yes, I never released my module because, frankly, I think it had some serious flaws.
I know reusing books is still not the ideal solution for slide authoring, but since only book has an outline editor in Drupal, it was the quickest to use, and I am going to have a presentation on Drupal this weekend, so I only had this much time. I have ideas for futher improvements (actually either creating a better outline editor for books, or abandoning books).
yes, well it turns out to be very not ideal. In addition to s5 needing some pretty strict formatting guidelines, you also can't print an s5 presentation to PDF (for example) - which is required for most conference speakers... you also can't link to a single slide, e.g. Anyway, I had quite a few reasons for not releasing my code - but primarily it was a one off "because I could" - and few people (ok, except for moshe... and vlado) really showed an interest. I think long term, though, we might want to look at something more like the PHP presentation system - for http://talks.php.net i thin ideally, we'd do this as "part of a drupal site" (i.e. slide nodes) ... but we could probably re-use some of their code.. -- James Walker :: http://walkah.net/
participants (6)
-
Gabor Hojtsy -
James Walker -
Kieran Lal -
Moshe Weitzman -
Robert Castelo -
vlado