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I never understood the appealing of Markdown for this kind of projects. At least on my environment, a presentation is a document that get send to different peop

I never understood the appealing of Markdown for this kind of projects. At least on my environment, a presentation is a document that get send to different people, or live in a network/sharepoint folder were several persons contribute to it. I imagine it must be a time saver for somebody, otherwise they were not be so many markdown presentation frameworks. But I can't figure it out the case.

blindseer 4y ago
The idea is that if you just wanted to send someone something to read you could send them a PDF or word document. If I wanted to present it you could build a ppt. And having the source for this un Markdown to use with pandoc is nice.
benrbray 4y ago
For me it's the ability to type math in LaTeX notation on the slides. Google slides doesn't support this and neither did PowerPoint last time I used it many years ago. When I was a TA I used a plugin to let me display Jupyter notebooks as a slideshow, that was really handy. Much better editing experience than ppt plus you have readable diffs with git.
AeroNotix 4y ago
I would assume the vast majority of use-cases for this kind of thing is that Markdown is really easy to write, simple to add the few markup type things you'd want (bullet lists, tables etc) while having a simple enough format to render to various other formats which are more widely accepted as being "professional" enough for presentations.
t43562 4y ago
You can put markdown into git and see diffs of it as it changes. This is easier with a text format than with PDF. On top of that you can just concentrate on the content because how it gets shown is mainly handled by the system not you. There might be less freedom but you are freed from burden too.
w0m 4y ago
Git is the answer. Inline rendering and versioning/sharing baked in.
wink 4y ago
I wrote something like this for conference talks ~12 years ago because I hate PowerPoint and don't have a Mac (for whatever not completely disastrous presentation tool my coworkers used). Didn't use it for a while but markdown to latex-beamer made total sense to me.
paultopia 4y ago
TBH the appeal for me is that using powerpoint and the like is miserable. The moment you have more than one element on a slide, it's click click click click click click drag drag drag drag click click drag drag click drag killself to get anything aligned and somehow it still comes out ugly and just MAKE IT STOP. the dream is that something could do for slides what LaTeX did for text---just make it possible to have basically attractive defaults for most cases rather than have to either tolerate ugly or spend hours doing layout
- xigoi 4y ago
  > the dream is that something could do for slides what LaTeX did for text Why not use LaTeX (Beamer) for presentations?
- sfpotter 4y ago
  Honestly, it's not that bad. I've used Beamer for years, and every time I make a presentation using it I fantasize about finding something like Powerpoint to use instead. You think adjusting things is bad in Powerpoint or Keynote, but it's much worse in LaTeX where you only have loose and indirect control over layout, unless you use something like PGF/TikZ, which is just... tedious, let's say. I have thought for a while that taking a class to learn how to properly use something like Adobe Illustrator would repay itself many times over. Also, a poor craftsman blames his tools... things like Beamer might "look nicer", but the downside is homogeneity. I've you seen one Beamer presentation, you've seen them all. On the other hand, the "ugliness" of a Powerpoint or Keynote presentation is probably down to your lack of skill at visual design.
  - paultopia 4y ago
    But that’s precisely the point. There are lots and lots of people who need to make presentations regularly, who do not have professional visual design training or the budget to hire pros. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that the number of PowerPoints and the like made by pros is a vanishingly small number of total PowerPoints. The rest of us are not supposed to be craftsmen in that, we’re supposed to be craftsmen in the thing the presentation is about. This is a market opportunity for someone to make better tools.

blindseer 4y ago

The idea is that if you just wanted to send someone something to read you could send them a PDF or word document. If I wanted to present it you could build a ppt. And having the source for this un Markdown to use with pandoc is nice.

benrbray 4y ago

For me it's the ability to type math in LaTeX notation on the slides. Google slides doesn't support this and neither did PowerPoint last time I used it many years ago. When I was a TA I used a plugin to let me display Jupyter notebooks as a slideshow, that was really handy. Much better editing experience than ppt plus you have readable diffs with git.

AeroNotix 4y ago

I would assume the vast majority of use-cases for this kind of thing is that Markdown is really easy to write, simple to add the few markup type things you'd want (bullet lists, tables etc) while having a simple enough format to render to various other formats which are more widely accepted as being "professional" enough for presentations.

t43562 4y ago

You can put markdown into git and see diffs of it as it changes. This is easier with a text format than with PDF. On top of that you can just concentrate on the content because how it gets shown is mainly handled by the system not you. There might be less freedom but you are freed from burden too.

w0m 4y ago

Git is the answer. Inline rendering and versioning/sharing baked in.

wink 4y ago

I wrote something like this for conference talks ~12 years ago because I hate PowerPoint and don't have a Mac (for whatever not completely disastrous presentation tool my coworkers used). Didn't use it for a while but markdown to latex-beamer made total sense to me.

paultopia 4y ago

TBH the appeal for me is that using powerpoint and the like is miserable. The moment you have more than one element on a slide, it's click click click click click click drag drag drag drag click click drag drag click drag killself to get anything aligned and somehow it still comes out ugly and just MAKE IT STOP. the dream is that something could do for slides what LaTeX did for text---just make it possible to have basically attractive defaults for most cases rather than have to either tolerate ugly or spend hours doing layout

xigoi 4y ago
> the dream is that something could do for slides what LaTeX did for text Why not use LaTeX (Beamer) for presentations?
sfpotter 4y ago
Honestly, it's not that bad. I've used Beamer for years, and every time I make a presentation using it I fantasize about finding something like Powerpoint to use instead. You think adjusting things is bad in Powerpoint or Keynote, but it's much worse in LaTeX where you only have loose and indirect control over layout, unless you use something like PGF/TikZ, which is just... tedious, let's say. I have thought for a while that taking a class to learn how to properly use something like Adobe Illustrator would repay itself many times over. Also, a poor craftsman blames his tools... things like Beamer might "look nicer", but the downside is homogeneity. I've you seen one Beamer presentation, you've seen them all. On the other hand, the "ugliness" of a Powerpoint or Keynote presentation is probably down to your lack of skill at visual design.
- paultopia 4y ago
  But that’s precisely the point. There are lots and lots of people who need to make presentations regularly, who do not have professional visual design training or the budget to hire pros. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that the number of PowerPoints and the like made by pros is a vanishingly small number of total PowerPoints. The rest of us are not supposed to be craftsmen in that, we’re supposed to be craftsmen in the thing the presentation is about. This is a market opportunity for someone to make better tools.