Robert W. Gehl

Latest FOSS Academic: Marp!

https://fossacademic.tech/2024/12/01/marp.html

In which I discuss a Markdown-based way to make slide shows.

Thanks to @linuxmatters for alerting me to the awesomeness that is Marp.

[Replies to this post will appear as comments on my blog]

#FOSSAcademic #FALD #marp

Marp!

As avid readers of my blog know, I am livin’ the FOSS Academic Lifestyle Dream: I use FOSS tools to do my academic work. I use Nextcloud to manage files and handle appointments, Zotero and Zettlr to take notes, and LibreOffice Writer to write books and articles. This blog runs on Jekyll. I love it all! But there has been one part of the Lifestyle that has consistently been a disappointment: LibreOffice Impress, the presentation software. While I use Writer all the time and enjoy doing so, Impress has always bothered me. But I’m not one to complain too much, since LibreOffice software is provided free-of-charge and with a FOSS license. I’ve soldiered on with it to make presentations for conferences and class teaching. But that might change. Marp – the Markdown Presentation Ecosystem – is poised to become a key part of the FOSS Academic Lifestyle Dream. If you’re familiar with Markdown, Marp is a really awesome tool.

FOSS Academic
Dec 1, 2024 at 6:22pmWeb
Show threadLinux Matters PodcastDec 1, 2024
@rwg Glad to see that you like Marp as much as we do 🙂 Thanks for listening.
Show threadChristian HigtonDec 1, 2024
Dear @rwg, your blog has been a must-read in my RSS reader for a while—thank you! Very interesting article I’ve been using Quarto within RStudio to produce my slides, then editing them in OpenOffice or similar software. This approach combines the joy of using Markdown with the convenience of a GUI for tweaking syntax. You can also use a reference file or a brandYAML to apply styles automatically. More info is available here: https://quarto.org/docs/presentations/. It also integrates with #Zotero. #quarto
Presentations – Quarto

Quarto
Show threadRobert W. GehlDec 2, 2024

@ChristianHigton Thank you!

I've received a lot of responses about really cool solutions to doing slides. I wish I had thought to look for a better approach than just Impress years ago!

Show threadBastian Greshake TzovarasDec 10, 2024

@rwg I've had this bookmarked since you posted it and today finally got around to trying it - for a talk I'll give tomorrow!

I'm really enjoying it so far, I used to prepare all my slides with Keynote when I was using MacOS, but with the switch to Linux I thought I'd give this a try over trying to learn the LibreOffice-PPT-equivalent!

Show threadRobert W. GehlDec 10, 2024

@gedankenstuecke Good luck! Let me know how it goes.

I'd be curious if you prefer to use the existing Marp themes or make your own. (I went with the latter, which took some time, but I get the satisfaction of making a theme that improves on the one I built in LibreOffice).

Show threadBastian Greshake TzovarasDec 10, 2024

@rwg I'll stick to the base-template for tomorrow's talk, given the short turn-around-time I thought simple will have to do.

But I can definitely see myself nerdsniping myself in the future with a custom theme (especially for the captions you demo!)

Show threadRobert W. GehlDec 10, 2024
@gedankenstuecke Yeah, THAT was the main thing for me. I could never get something like captions in Libreoffice. Just an ugly textbox I had to hand-draw.
Show threadBastian Greshake TzovarasDec 10, 2024

@rwg yeah, I have to say I'm missing Keynote a bit, if only because I have a library of 10+ years worth of presentations given with it, so it's easy to mix and match slides.

Or in other words: I had successfully locked myself into the Apple ecosystem, as the only way to move away from it is to convert them to PPTX, which already makes them be ugly 🙈 But then I also don't feel like firing up the Mac I still have laying around just for making slides.