sent

A simple plaintext presentation tool.

sent does not need latex, libreoffice or any other fancy file format, it uses plaintext files and png images. Every line represents a slide in the presentation. This may limit the use, but for presentations using the Takahashi method this is very nice and allows you to write down the presentation for a quick lightning talk within a few minutes.

The presentation is displayed in a simple X11 window colored black on white for maximum contrast even if the sun shines directly onto the projected image. The content of each slide is automatically scaled to fit the window so you don't have to worry about alignment. Instead you can really concentrate on the content.

Demo

To get a little demo, just type

make && ./sent example

You can navigate with the arrow keys and quit with q. If you get

sent: could not find a scalable font matching -*-dejavu sans condensed-bold-r-*-*-0-0-*-*-*-0-*-*

you should add the dejavu fonts dir (customize path to fit your distribution) with:

xset fp+ /usr/share/fonts/dejavu

Configuration

Edit config.h to fit your needs. The font has to be in the X servers font path, see man xset for how to add it.

Usage

sent [-f FONTSTRING] FILE1 [FILE2 ...]

If one FILE equals -, stdin will be read. Use png images by prepending a @ before the filename. Lines starting with # will be ignored. A presentation file could look like this:

sent
why?
@nyan.png
easy to use
depends on Xlib, libpng
no bloat
how?
sent FILENAME
one slide per line
# This is a comment and will not be part of the presentation
# The next line starts with a whitespace, it will not produce an image slide
 @FILE.png
thanks / questions?

future features

• utf8 support (via Xft)
• multiple lines per slide?
• light colored background and table of contents
• second window for speakers laptop (progress, time, notes?)
• markdown?