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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 cl

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.
  - sfpotter 4y ago
    I disagree. If you're giving presentations as part of your job, then part of your job is to give presentations. Presumably, you should also do a good job of giving those presentations. Giving a good presentation means communicating effectively using the medium, which very well could require becoming enough of a craftsman to use the medium well. Lots of jobs require learning skills that are unrelated to main focus of the job. That's just life. Of course, we could talk about whether so many people should be giving presentations, but that's another issue... I suppose the opportunity exists for someone to step in and create a magical tool, but I have to say I think it's probably better if people just learn to communicate visually if they're able.
    - paultopia 4y ago
      I mean, sure, I guess, if you think that visual design isn’t a professional field that people can spend their whole careers on. I come at this from a weird angle, maybe. As an academic, I’m basically a professional writer. I recognize that I have pro-level writing skills, earned over years of blood and pain, and that when I read some corporate memo (more often than I’d like) it will almost certainly be written very badly, by my lights. But I forgive that, because even though writing memos and such is a part of many corporate jobs, it isn’t the most important skill, and it’s a skill that takes years to master. Would it be ideal if those memos were written more skillfully? Sure. Is that realistic, given the constraints on people’s time? Absolutely not. When someone wires up a language transformer model to fix that, I will cheer.
      - sfpotter 4y ago
        I guess it depends on what field of academics you're in. Speaking as a fellow academic, all the time I've spent improving my ability to communicate visually has repaid itself many times over. This has helped my talks, my skills in the classroom, and my papers (it doesn't hurt to be able to make nice figures). It even helps when I'm just trying to explain something to a colleague on the blackboard. (Incidentally, your response is quite condescending. I clearly didn't suggest that visual design isn't a professional field.)
jnsie 4y ago
I've had the exact opposite experience, to be honest. Powerpoint is about the most drag-and-drop friendly tool I've used and makes creating presentations a breeze for my use case. It offers vertical and horizontal guides when moving objects around and manipulating text and images is much more intuitive in my experience than manipulating CSS/HTML/Markdown. I guess my use cases differ from many on here...

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.
- sfpotter 4y ago
  I disagree. If you're giving presentations as part of your job, then part of your job is to give presentations. Presumably, you should also do a good job of giving those presentations. Giving a good presentation means communicating effectively using the medium, which very well could require becoming enough of a craftsman to use the medium well. Lots of jobs require learning skills that are unrelated to main focus of the job. That's just life. Of course, we could talk about whether so many people should be giving presentations, but that's another issue... I suppose the opportunity exists for someone to step in and create a magical tool, but I have to say I think it's probably better if people just learn to communicate visually if they're able.
  - paultopia 4y ago
    I mean, sure, I guess, if you think that visual design isn’t a professional field that people can spend their whole careers on. I come at this from a weird angle, maybe. As an academic, I’m basically a professional writer. I recognize that I have pro-level writing skills, earned over years of blood and pain, and that when I read some corporate memo (more often than I’d like) it will almost certainly be written very badly, by my lights. But I forgive that, because even though writing memos and such is a part of many corporate jobs, it isn’t the most important skill, and it’s a skill that takes years to master. Would it be ideal if those memos were written more skillfully? Sure. Is that realistic, given the constraints on people’s time? Absolutely not. When someone wires up a language transformer model to fix that, I will cheer.
    - sfpotter 4y ago
      I guess it depends on what field of academics you're in. Speaking as a fellow academic, all the time I've spent improving my ability to communicate visually has repaid itself many times over. This has helped my talks, my skills in the classroom, and my papers (it doesn't hurt to be able to make nice figures). It even helps when I'm just trying to explain something to a colleague on the blackboard. (Incidentally, your response is quite condescending. I clearly didn't suggest that visual design isn't a professional field.)

jnsie 4y ago

I've had the exact opposite experience, to be honest. Powerpoint is about the most drag-and-drop friendly tool I've used and makes creating presentations a breeze for my use case. It offers vertical and horizontal guides when moving objects around and manipulating text and images is much more intuitive in my experience than manipulating CSS/HTML/Markdown. I guess my use cases differ from many on here...