Skip to main content
1-Visitor
February 15, 2010
Question

PTC/User presentation slides

  • February 15, 2010
  • 3 replies
  • 1039 views
For those of you who will be presenting at PTC/User this year, congratulations!

If anyone is interested in *not* using PowerPoint to prepare their
slides, I have an XSL-FO stylesheet that I put together as I assembled
my slides last year. It takes standard DITA concept markup as input
and produces PDF that is visually indistinguishable (to most eyes,
anyway) from the PTC/User-supplied template.

Of course, there are differences. The results you get with this
approach will be more consistent and less work. You'll just have to
take the bad with the good. 😉

I'll be updating this to match the template for this year, as well as
working on smoothing out some of the rough corners that remained after
last year's work. If anyone is interested in trying it out, or
helping out with feedback and the like, please let me know.

-Brandon 🙂

    3 replies

    1-Visitor
    February 16, 2010
    Yes, please. (And that's one item I can cross off of my ToDo list.)

    Any chance you played with sending the output to DMP (perhaps by way of HTML
    Help)? (That'd be two items off of my ToDo list. Too much to ask for on a
    Monday-like Tuesday, I'm sure.)

    On Mon, Feb 15, 2010 at 11:32 AM, Brandon Ibach <
    brandon.ibach@single-sourcing.com> wrote:

    > For those of you who will be presenting at PTC/User this year,
    > congratulations!
    >
    > If anyone is interested in *not* using PowerPoint to prepare their
    > slides, I have an XSL-FO stylesheet that I put together as I assembled
    > my slides last year. It takes standard DITA concept markup as input
    > and produces PDF that is visually indistinguishable (to most eyes,
    > anyway) from the PTC/User-supplied template.
    >
    > Of course, there are differences. The results you get with this
    > approach will be more consistent and less work. You'll just have to
    > take the bad with the good. 😉
    >
    > I'll be updating this to match the template for this year, as well as
    > working on smoothing out some of the rough corners that remained after
    > last year's work. If anyone is interested in trying it out, or
    > helping out with feedback and the like, please let me know.
    >
    > -Brandon 🙂
    >
    bibach1-VisitorAuthor
    1-Visitor
    February 17, 2010
    Hi, Paul (and others who have expressed interest)...

    I haven't done anything with DMP in this project, but I'd be happy to
    work with you on it if you want to do some experimenting this year.

    At the moment, I'm waiting for a copy of the 2010 presentation
    template, which I will use to update the stylesheet, probably with a
    little refactoring of the whole application, while I'm at it. The
    stylesheet, a sample/template and corresponding instructions should be
    available in plenty of time for preparing first draft presentations.
    I expect there may be a few releases as I incorporate feedback and
    additional features.

    For those who are eager to get started sooner, the existing
    application (for the 2009 conference) was based on a single DITA
    <concept> for each slide (or set of slides, as content is wrapped to
    additional slides as needed, with automatic continuation titles).
    Basic markup is as you'd expect (title, ul, ol, li, table, image...),
    with just a few twists (e.g.,

    for slide
    subtitles). I'm certainly open to suggestions for tweaks to the
    supported markup.

    -Brandon 🙂

    1-Visitor
    February 17, 2010
    I'll watch for your release and put together a DMP bundle to "catch" your
    efforts.

    On Wed, Feb 17, 2010 at 1:08 PM, Brandon Ibach <
    brandon.ibach@single-sourcing.com> wrote:

    > Hi, Paul (and others who have expressed interest)...
    >
    > I haven't done anything with DMP in this project, but I'd be happy to
    > work with you on it if you want to do some experimenting this year.
    >
    > At the moment, I'm waiting for a copy of the 2010 presentation
    > template, which I will use to update the stylesheet, probably with a
    > little refactoring of the whole application, while I'm at it. The
    > stylesheet, a sample/template and corresponding instructions should be
    > available in plenty of time for preparing first draft presentations.
    > I expect there may be a few releases as I incorporate feedback and
    > additional features.
    >
    > For those who are eager to get started sooner, the existing
    > application (for the 2009 conference) was based on a single DITA
    > <concept> for each slide (or set of slides, as content is wrapped to
    > additional slides as needed, with automatic continuation titles).
    > Basic markup is as you'd expect (title, ul, ol, li, table, image...),
    > with just a few twists (e.g.,

    for slide
    > subtitles). I'm certainly open to suggestions for tweaks to the
    > supported markup.
    >
    > -Brandon 🙂
    >
    >