Re: Presentation software

[Lauris Kaplinski <lauris ximian com>]

On 12 Apr 2001 23:42:14 +0200, Hubert Figuiere wrote:
> -Several drawing package. Pick one and you have the core of the graphic 
> layer for the slide. It see that Dia is IMHO the best candidate for 
> this. Afterall I have seen lot of people (including my wife despite my 
> advice) using PowerPoint as a chart drawer.

Heh ;-)
And one of my friends used PowerPoint to to business cards. But I think
it was principially because he didn't want to pay for real drawing
program.
I would suggest borrowing drawing engine from sodipodi, of course, for 2
reasons:
1. I is already has somewhat-DOM-like document tree. I.e. sodipodi eats
whatever xml you feed it with, consuming SVG but leaving all unknown
parts asis. And does that dynamically - i.e. updating display according
to changes in plain xml structure. Excellent way to do plugins (although
there is none yet ;()
2. It has (will have) real drawing engine, in contrast with MSDraw like.
Maybe that's only me, but I personally started to hate MSDraw after
working with Corel long time ago. Of course - presentation program needs
extras, like powerful snnapping and aligning, but I'd prefer those on
top of good graphic engine.

> So what is missing ?
> -A file format for the presentation: let's use XML coupled with SVG for 
> individual slides

SVG does everything you ever need for final presentation format,
including animations etc. For editable format you have to pick it with
metainfo, of course - but that is doable.

> -a viewer: I'm pretty sure that with EOG and some rasterizer we have 
> what we need

Actually I used slightly hacked sodipodi for my GUADEC presentation
engine. Not a big deal, of course, but using SVG as file format we will
never have lack viewer (hint - Mozilla SVG plugin et cousins ;)

Best wishes,
Lauris Kaplinski