Markus Hoenicka

hoenicka_markus@compuserve.com

Computer-based presentations gain popularity in meetings and fairs. A certain product from a Redmont, WA based company has a huge marketshare, which is not good for these reasons: The said product is neither free nor Free The said product is not portable to other platforms but M$ Windows dbslide offers a simple alternative, which may be sufficient for many but the most sophisticated presentations. dbslide is a SGML application using the DocBook DTD dbslide is implemented as driver files for Norman Walsh's modular DocBook stylesheets plus some helper files The appearance can be customized in all output formats Computer presentations Overhead presentations Slide presentations dbslide.dsl A driver file for the HTML output of the modular DocBook stylesheets. It implements experimental JavaScript/JScript code to assist the keyboard- and mouse-based navigation in the presentation. dbslideovh.dsl A driver file for the print output of the modular DocBook stylesheets. It implements large fonts for the output of conventional overhead sheets. dbslidehdout.dsl A driver file for the print output. Used for the handouts and the speaker's copy fixdbslide A helper shell script to fix the JavaScript/JScript code generated by (Open)Jade dbslide.css A cascading stylesheet which implements large fonts for projection purposes. dbslide uses three DSSSL stylesheets to generate the different output formats from the SGML source. output stylesheet screen presentation dbslide.dsl overheads/slides dbslideovh.dsl handout dbslidehdout.dsl speaker's copy dbslidehdout.dsl Compatibility: MSIE, Netscape (not Unix) Return, space, n (as in next) Moves on to the next slide Backspace (only Netscape), p (as in previous), b (as in back) Moves back to the previous slide h (as in home) Goes back to the start page. Compatibility: MSIE, Netscape Left click >= 200 pixel from the left margin Moves on to the next slide Left click < 200 pixel from the left margin Moves back to the previous slide Left click and Alt key Goes back to the start page DocBook is an acknowledged industry standard for technical documentations. DocBook is platform-independent. Therefore Create the presentation with any text editor Show the presentation on any platform with a browser Make hotfixes to your presentation minutes before you start - on any platform, with any editor Use all those nifty SGML tricks to process your document: Use the dbslide stylesheets for the presentation and for slides/overheads Use the DocBook print stylesheets for the handouts Use marked sections for the presenters comments dbslide is a quick hack, so it has its very own limitations: The CSS is not fully implemented, so many elements are displayed using default settings. The DSSSL files are kludgy, e.g. they lack simple user-customization. dbslide presentations are also limited by browser capabilities: JavaScript navigation is somewhat unreliable on Netscape ("press and pray") JavaScript keyboard navigation fails in Netscape on Unix Get or compile Jade/OpenJade Use Emacs and PSGML to edit the documents A complete suite of free SGML tools for Win32 is described at SGML for Windows NT dbslide is a package to create computer presentations or slides/overheads dbslide is based on DocBook dbslide is fully customizable dbslide presentations can be written and run on any platform with a text editor and a web browser dbslide is free (as in free beer and in Free speech)