Building and presenting slide decks with rst2pdf

I've recently used rst2pdf for building presentation slides. This short talk will show some examples of how I built and presented a slide deck using reStructuredText and rst2pdf.

https://www.oliverdavies.uk/talks/building-presenting-slide-decks-rst2pdf

Transcript

1. Building and
   presenting slide decks
   with rst2pdf
   Oliver Davies (@opdavies)
   

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2. What have I used before?
   • UI based: Keynote, Google Slides, slides.com
   • HTML/JavaScript: reveal.js
   • Markdown: Deckset, Marp, reveal-md
   @opdavies
   

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3. What is rst2pdf?
   • "Use a text editor. Make a PDF."
   • reStructuredText to PDF
   • Each slide is a page
   • Page templates for layouts
   • Not just for slide decks
   • Table of contents, page numbers, headers, footers
   @opdavies
   

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4. Advantages
   • Easy to start a new presentation, or update an existing one
   • Version controllable
   • Portable
   • Content is searchable
   • Easy to re-use content and/or styling
   • Slides uploaded to SpeakerDeck straight away
   @opdavies
   

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5. @opdavies
   

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6. Useful reStructuredText
   1 Building and presenting slide decks with rst2pdf
   2 ################################################
   3
   4 .. class:: titleslideinfo
   5
   6 Oliver Davies (@opdavies)
   7
   8
   9 What is rst2pdf?
   10 ================
   11
   12 * "Use a text editor. Make a PDF."
   13 * reStructuredText to PDF
   14 * Each slide is a page
   @opdavies
   

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7. Useful reStructuredText
   1 .. image:: images/editing.png
   2 :width: 20cm
   3
   4
   5 .. code-block:: php
   6 :startinline: true
   7 :linenos:
   8
   9 echo 'Hello world!';
   10
   11
   12 .. raw:: pdf
   13
   14 TextAnnotation "This is a speaker note."
   @opdavies
   

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8. Page Templates
   main.style:
   pageTemplates:
   standardPage:
   frames: []
   [3%, 3%, 92%, 92%]
   showFooter: true
   showHeader: false
   slides.rst:
   .. raw:: pdf
   PageBreak standardPage
   @opdavies
   

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9. Keeping things organised
   Split slides into different sections:
   .. include:: sections/intro.rst
   Including code snippets from separate files:
   .. code-block:: javascript
   :include: code/additional-config-options.txt
   :hl_lines: 2 3 4
   :linenos:
   @opdavies
   

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10. Styling
    1 linkColor: #24608a
    2
    3 styles:
    4 normal:
    5 fontSize: 24
    6 leading: 32
    7 textColor: #383745
    8
    9 bodytext:
    10 alignment: TA_LEFT
    11
    12 heading:
    13 fontSize: 20
    14 spaceAfter: 16
    @opdavies
    

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11. 15 textColor: #24608a
    16
    17 title:
    18 fontSize: 300%
    19 parent: heading
    20 textColor: white
    21
    22 bullet-list:
    23 commands: []
    24 [LEFTPADDING, [0, 0], [1, -1], 10]
    25 [RIGHTPADDING, [0, 0], [1, -1], 0]
    26 [VALIGN, [0, 0], [-1, -1], TOP]
    27 colWidths: ["20", null]
    28 textColor: #aaaaaa
    @opdavies
    

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12. Building
    rst2pdf slides.rst
    rst2pdf slides.rst --break-level 1 --stylesheets main
    rst2pdf slides.rst \
    --output slides.pdf \
    --stylesheets main \
    --break-level 1 \
    --fit-background-mode scale \
    --extension-module preprocess
    @opdavies
    

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13. Watching
    Re-compiling when something changes.
    nodemon --ext rst,style,txt --exec "
    rst2pdf slides.rst \
    --output slides.pdf \
    --stylesheets main \
    --break-level 1 \
    --fit-background-mode scale \
    --extension-module preprocess
    "
    @opdavies
    

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14. Presenting
    pdfpc - PDF presenter console
    pdfpc slides.pdf
    @opdavies
    

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15. @opdavies
    

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16. @opdavies
    

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17. Thanks!
    References:
    • https://rst2pdf.org
    • https://github.com/rst2pdf/rst2pdf
    • https://github.com/opdavies/talks
    • https://oliverdavies.link/lorna-rst2pdf-talk
    Me:
    • https://www.oliverdavies.uk
    @opdavies
    

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