Easiest-to-use Perl slideshow generator?

u65 has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I am seeking fellow Monks' opinions on the easiest and Perliest way to create a satisfactory slide presentation (in either html or odp format) without the agony of directly using either LibreOffice or Power Point.

I have cobbled together my own Perl system which uses a text input file (and a base odp file as a template) to generate a new odp file, and I have used it for a presentation, but it's very limited (I plan to revisit it and maybe put it on Github). I have also looked at ~~three~~ two other Perl systems which use text input:

ingy's ("ingy@cpan.org") Stump, a CPAN version of Larry Wall's ~~softwear~~ software which generates odp slides that look kind of ugly when stressed a bit. The input is very simple, but limited, and the Perl code looks to be very hard to work with since it deals with the very wordy xml used by odp.
ingy's Spork which generates reasonable html and is promising (but it hasn't been updated since 2011). It uses Kwiki markup as input, and I have created a usable presentation with it. Its Perl source seems to be a bit easier to extend but it won't be trivial at first (I already tried a hack to use a local image file but my short foray into its bowels was fruitless). Update: It turned out that a local image file can be used but it's not clearly documented: the user inputs the image's base filename, and the image has to be somehow placed in the using project's default "slides/images" directory before running spork -make.

There are several slideshow generators out there based on html templates that are painful to use so they do not pass my easy-to-use criterion.

On the non-Pearl side I have looked at Haiku Deck which was mentioned in this blog post: Best Alternatives to PowerPoint. The on-line editor seems to be easy to use, but the system comes with a lot of intrusive social media interface baggage that I don't want.

In summary, Spork is my current choice of slideshow generator, but I would appreciate any other "easy-to-use" choices to consider that might be better.

Update: Bingo (I hope), not Perlish exactly, but I think AsciiDoc with the deck.js plugin may be the ticket. To me its markup is easier than POD, and the slides look stunning! As well, the presentation can be converted to PDF with the asciidoc tools.

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Re: Easiest-to-use Perl slideshow generator? by Corion (Patriarch) on Oct 12, 2015 at 21:33 UTC
Personally, I really like spod5, which converts POD to an S5 slide show. The only downside of S5 to me is that it doesn't readily produce a PDF.	[reply]
Re^2: Easiest-to-use Perl slideshow generator? by LanX (Saint) on Oct 12, 2015 at 22:13 UTC
Well adding media CSS for print shouldn't be too difficult, or am I missing something? Or is automating the browser your issue? Cheers Rolf _{(addicted to the Perl Programming Language and ☆☆☆☆ :) Je suis Charlie!}	[reply]
Re^3: Easiest-to-use Perl slideshow generator? by u65 (Chaplain) on Oct 12, 2015 at 23:40 UTC
Well, I'd rather not get my hands dirty with having to fool with the css (unless it would be a one-time affair that would be resusable with a given slide theme)--I'd much rather have an "automatic" solution.	[reply]
Re^4: Easiest-to-use Perl slideshow generator? by LanX (Saint) on Oct 13, 2015 at 00:09 UTC
Re^5: Easiest-to-use Perl slideshow generator? by u65 (Chaplain) on Oct 13, 2015 at 00:27 UTC
Re^3: Easiest-to-use Perl slideshow generator? by Corion (Patriarch) on Oct 13, 2015 at 06:57 UTC
The "print" CSS is not what I'd like in the PDF. I'd like a "presentation" PDF, not a "print" PDF.	[reply]
Re^4: Easiest-to-use Perl slideshow generator? by LanX (Saint) on Oct 13, 2015 at 07:06 UTC
Re^5: Easiest-to-use Perl slideshow generator? by Corion (Patriarch) on Oct 13, 2015 at 07:20 UTC
Some notes below your chosen depth have not been shown here
Re^2: Easiest-to-use Perl slideshow generator? by u65 (Chaplain) on Oct 12, 2015 at 22:00 UTC
Thanks, Corion, that spod5 => sp5 looks pretty slick! So what work flow do you use to create pdf? Update: Corrected spod5 link reference (there are two spod5 creations on CPAN!).	[reply]
Re^3: Easiest-to-use Perl slideshow generator? by Corion (Patriarch) on Oct 13, 2015 at 06:59 UTC
Currently, I don't produce PDF. So far, I've found HTML to be good enough for most purposes. My plan is to either automate Firefox or PhantomJS and take a screenshot of every slide and stitch them together, or to finally understand the Powerpoint PPTX format and produce Powerpoint slides directly.	[reply]
Re: Easiest-to-use Perl slideshow generator? by LanX (Saint) on Oct 12, 2015 at 22:40 UTC
reveal-js has become popular lately ... but I'm personally using Emacs org-mode to produce Beamer LaTeX presentations. See also this tutorial Cheers Rolf _{(addicted to the Perl Programming Language and ☆☆☆☆ :) Je suis Charlie!}	[reply]
Re^2: Easiest-to-use Perl slideshow generator? by salva (Canon) on Oct 13, 2015 at 07:43 UTC
I use org-mode + org-reveal!	[reply]
Re^3: Easiest-to-use Perl slideshow generator? by LanX (Saint) on Oct 13, 2015 at 08:50 UTC
Thanks great! While beamer is producing great pdf, all those styles make latex pretty slow, which makes turn around time a pain. Exporting to reveal / html is a good alternative, at least in design phase. Btw: Should be mentioned that S5 accepts XOXO which is one of the org export formats. Cheers Rolf _{(addicted to the Perl Programming Language and ☆☆☆☆ :) Je suis Charlie!}	[reply]
Re: Easiest-to-use Perl slideshow generator? by CountZero (Bishop) on Oct 13, 2015 at 06:25 UTC
As LanX reported LaTeX + Beamer is a very powerful combination, but it pre-supposes some knowledge of (La)TeX to use it to its full extent. If there has to be a Perl angle to it, you can make a template in (for instance) Template::Toolkit and fill that through a Perl script that takes its input from a simple text file. CountZero A program should be light and agile, its subroutines connected like a string of pearls. The spirit and intent of the program should be retained throughout. There should be neither too little or too much, neither needless loops nor useless variables, neither lack of structure nor overwhelming rigidity." - The Tao of Programming, 4.1 - Geoffrey James My blog: Imperial Deltronics	[reply]
Re: Easiest-to-use Perl slideshow generator? by choroba (Cardinal) on Oct 13, 2015 at 09:34 UTC
I usually use Slidy with a custom Makefile and xsh scripts to validate XML/HTML files and replace `<?code example1.pl ?>` with syntax highlighted content of the script, `<?out example1.pl ?>` with its output, etc. I'm not sure it's the easiest, but if you're fluent in HTML, it's comfortable. لսႽ† ᥲᥒ⚪⟊Ⴙᘓᖇ Ꮅᘓᖇ⎱ Ⴙᥲ𝇋ƙᘓᖇ	[reply] [d/l] [select]