SVG Slideshow

Download Usage Slideshows Limitations/TODO

DocBook now has a DTD for producing slides. The DocBook project provides XSL stylesheets for creating slideshow presentations in HTML.

Instead of using HTML for presenting slides, this XSL stylesheet creates an SVG document that presents the slideshow. The idea is to have a slideshow presentation that (at least) mimics MS Powerpoint. In time, we hope to make the stylesheet create SVGs that are rich in features and allow for much flexibility in the presentation, such as non-linear slideshows.

Download

All you need is the XSL stylesheet (or get it via FTP).

Usage

Write your slideshow as a DocBook Slide (3.0) document. A title foil is automatically created. You may divide your slides into foilgroup elements, in which case a Table Of Contents (TOC) foil will be automatically created. Each foilgroup will be separated by a foil.

Creating a SVG slideshow is simply a matter of using XSLT. For example, using xsltproc:

xsltproc -o presentation.svg default-svg.xsl my-slideshow.xml

You can specify a number of parameters to alter the presentation created.

css-stylesheet: CSS stylesheet to use. Most presentation details (colours, fonts, etc) are best controlled with a CSS stylesheet.
graphics.dir: Where to find the graphics for the slideshow.
toc.bg.color: Background colour for the TOC foil.
font.family: Font to use for text in the foils. See also css-stylesheet.
bg.color: Background color to use for foils. See also css-stylesheet.
fg.color: Foreground color to use for foils. See also css-stylesheet.
foil.width: Width, in pixels, for the foils. Default: 800.
foil.height: Height, in pixels, for the foils. Default: 600.
toc.line.max: How many lines to display per column in the TOC.

Slideshows

The stylesheet creates a single SVG document that contains all of the foils. An extra foil is created for the title foil. If the slideshow contains foilgroups then a TOC foil is included, as well as a version of the TOC foil to separate the groups.

A mouse click anywhere on the foil advances to the next slide. Clicking on the last slide returns to the title foil.

Navigation buttons are included in the lower left-hand corner. These are displayed when the mouse rolls over them. On all foils except the first, a previous button returns to the previous foil. A TOC button jumps to the TOC foil.

Limitations/TODO

Only very few of the DocBook elements have been implemented. Foils are basically limited to paras, itemizedlist and mediaobject/imageobject elements.

It is up to the user to ensure that lines are not too long, and that there are only 6-7 lines per slide.