Re: [docbook-apps] slides: how to balance presentation and content

[Dave Pawson <davep@dpawson.co.uk>]

Stefan Seefeld wrote:
> Dave Pawson wrote:
>>
>> If it is accepted that 'presentations' are appropriate, then
>> perhaps moving slides to db5 and extending it to provide the markup
>> you want wouldn't be inappropriate. Relax schemas are so nice to work
>> with for extensions.
>>
>> What additional markup is needed? A lot, or just minor additions?
> 
> That's an interesting question. The obvious addition would be support 
> for incremental slide presentation. This includes incremental list 
> items, as well as other incremental content, but it also includes 
> graphics overlays. (I abused the mediaobject semantics, which already 
> allows multiple imageobjects; I changed the semantics to mean that all 
> imageobjects inside a mediaobjects are to be overlayed, and displayed 
> incrementally.)

Wow, this gets messy. IMHO that is too close to the physical 
presentation, i.e. showing it to the audience, i.e. how html is
shown in the browser, than the simple 'presentational markup'

Where to draw the line? Overlays and slides are javascript + html 
surely? Same way that Norm added 'next slide' type javascript.

What markup are you thinking of for incremental lists?
list continuation attributes? Semantic = continue numbering from
previous-sibling::list?


> 
> Another area is to explicitely allow multi-column displays, with 
> explicit placement into those columns (or more generally, blocks). 
> Having content flow automatically is typically not what presentation 
> authors want.

Which is getting pretty close to xsl-fo? Again, where to draw the line?
I've used CSS for multi-column presentation of html divs... how to get 
that back into markup?
   By the sound of it you want n divs, then a means to lay them out?
perhaps using some <sect-n> element with an attribute indicating left
or right layout? is that the sort of thing?


> 
> There is certainly much more to be done. I'm not a presentation 
> power-user,

<chuckle/> you are, compared to what I've used slides for!


  so my use-cases are rather minimal.
> But this is a start. Or actually, moving docbook-slides to DB5 would be 
> the start. <wink/>


A couple of us moved website to db5 in a week or two. Same effort for
slides I think.

I'm not 100% at the moment or I'd offer to do it. Not hard though, honest.



regards

-- 
Dave Pawson
XSLT XSL-FO FAQ.
http://www.dpawson.co.uk