[Vimoutliner] Tools to convert vol file to presentation?

[Steve Litt]

On Wednesday 13 June 2007 10:54, Matthew Weier O'Phinney wrote:
> Greetings!
>
> I'm a programmer, and I use vim for everything -- code, outlines, email,
> contact management, etc. I use vimoutliner for a ton of what I do, from
> outlining program logic to TODO lists to changelogs to... you get the
> idea.
>
> One thing I've been doing more and more often is giving tutorials and
> speaking at conferences. I have discovered I loathe PowerPoint and
> ooImpress because they simply don't make it easy to create my materials
> -- I spend more time applying styles, positioning elements, etc. than I
> do actually creating the content. Typically I end up doing cut-and-paste
> from vimoutliner to one of these programs, but the process is tedious.
>
> I've tried using S5 (http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/s5/), and like it
> fairly well -- HTML is easy for me to understand and write, and it's
> relatively easy for me to convert a vimoutliner file into a set of
> slides. However, I've found that there's a threshold of slides after
> which S5 becomes incredibly sluggish; if I add in anything like JS code
> syntax highlighting, its unbearable.
>
> What would probably be ideal for me is if I could script converting my
> vimoutliner files to ooImpress; at least that would eliminate the
> cut-and-paste, though it wouldn't solve all issues.
>
> Has anyone else tried to convert vimoutliner files to a presentation
> format? what have you tried? what worked?

Hi Matthew,

Years and years ago, I created scripts to convert a .otl file to something I 
call htmlslides. (http://www.troubleshooters.cxm/projects/htmlslides). 
HTMLslides is simply a website with next and previous links to create a 
linear "slideshow" in html. My script was kinda hokey and the conversion was 
one way, meaning if you modified the htmlslides presentation and then 
modified the .otl and reran the scripts, your custom htmlslides changes would 
be overwritten. 

I think that years ago Noel created a more sophisticated htmlslides project 
and a .otl to htmlslides script to go with it, although as I remember I 
didn't like his because instead of being linear it still retained the 
hierarchy, which to me gave me a feeling of being lost and to me didn't have 
the proper amount of detail on each page.

The point is, it's easy to create scripts to make a .otl into any kind of HTML 
group of files that you want, complete with links for next and previous, as 
well as parent and children if you want.

One other thing I've done, and this works only for the geekiest of audiences. 
I've actually used VO as a presentation tool, expanding and collapsing as 
necessary so the audience knows where they are.

Both VO and html have one huge advantage over Powerpoint/OOimpress/PDF 
slideshows: You can easily cut and paste from your slideshow into editors, 
command lines and the like. For parts of your slideshow that are dog and pony 
shows, this REALLY REALLY REALLY goes smoother and makes a better impression 
on the audience.

HTH

SteveT