Presentations using LiveCode

[danielrr]

Did anyone here ever used LiveCode to do a presentation? Did you build some keynote & PP -like behavior into a LiveCode presentation application you can show?

[richmond62]

I have done in the past for various conferences on EFL (English as a Foreign Language),
but deleted them subsequently as they had no lasting value.

But doing this sort of thing is extremely easy.

[xAction]

Visual Effects between cards

Just remember the most important rules of presentations:

1. No more than 4 points per slide
2. Nobody remembers the numbers
3. Nobody can read charts and graphs in a presentation
4. If you want people to read: enlarge the text

And uh. some other stuff.

[stam]

Interesting topic...

Aside from what content you should provide in a presentation, the liveCode programming aspects of interest to me would be:

- create background elements that make the slides all look like they are the same presentation
- adaptive layouts that position and resize elements so they are independent of screen size/resolution (within reason!)
- figure out a way to adaptively change text size appropriately (given that text must be large relative to the slide)
- create the 3-4 different layouts as reusable elements (eg title page layout, layout with 1 graphic and 1 column of text, layout with title and graphic only, layout for text only, etc) so that the slides seem homogenous.
- For extra bonus points create a polling system

Sadly i personally would never be able to use a system like this - every conference i speak at is completely and solely accepting of Power Point presentations only, largely because presenting from your own laptop has become increasingly outlawed (understandable, as switching laptops and getting them to speak with the monitor/screen could take upwards of 10-15 minutes in worse cases) and there is a whole industry of automated systems that will schedule and present powerpoint slides centrally - other formats do not work and are not accepted.

Then of course, (in my sphere of work at least) institutions that run these conferences would have to be conferred 'ownership' of your slides which are reused without your permission.
I was extremely 'amused' to find that when i attended a US conference 2 years in a row, in the second year some conference salesperson tried to sell me the previous year's conference on DVD, using my own presentation as a sales pitch!!!

Now if LC could actually produce power point presentations, that would be a different matter... (may well be feasible i suppose...)

[xAction]

Ugh685 page document to describe the powerpoint .ppt file format.

[stam]

Then of course there’s the question of why not just use PowerPoint

[richmond62]

Then of course there’s the question of why not just use PowerPoint

Well, the first reeason that I can think of is that Powerpoint is so moronically easy that there
is no challenge whatsoever.

[stam]

Well, the first reason that I can think of is that Powerpoint is so moronically easy that there is no challenge whatsoever.

On a more serious note, why not just use PowerPoint, or (my preferred option) Keynote on Mac or Google Slides.

The arguments for considering 'rolling your own' as far as i can imagine are:
1. this isn't for a presentation but for something like a kiosk app. Probably a valid option, especially if it's something like a tutorial built into your app.
2. you want to disallow people from using your material by keeping it in a proprietary format (so it can be viewed only). But then important to remember people can help themselves to your stuff anyway by recording the screen etc. In my aforementioned US conferences, i on purpose had my slides in Keynote format (so they couldn't directly use these) and used specialised codecs for the medical videos that don't work on powerpoint etc. But they just recorded my presentation with a camera and tried to sell it back to me the following year...
3. for the hell of it. Well OK, that is a challenge - but going to be hard to create a powerpoint-killer. And even if you did, there's no profit in it...

So i guess the question goes back to the OP - what are they trying to achieve?
Why not use the best tool for the job? (PP/Keynote/Slides etc)

[richmond62]

On a more serious note

For some odd reason when it comes to Powerpoint I cannot be serious.

Why did the 2 professors at some second-rate university get run over by a bus?

Because they were arguing about the finer points of Powerpoint presentations.

If ONLY that were a joke!

[stam]

Only it's unlikely it will be as good as designated presentation software - at least not without very considerable effort.
In my profession there isn't even a choice in major conferences, it has to be in PowerPoint as the presentations are queued on a server.

Presentations in other formats are just not accepted, which is annoying to me, because i prefer Apple's Keynote - for the simple reason i have a ton of cardiac imaging in various video formats and codecs which Keynote plays without blinking and embeds within the prevention so the video is never 'not found'. PowerPoint chokes on anything that isn't AVI, WMV or if you're lucky mp4. But then it's so easy to break the link between video and powerpoint.

But assuming you're not bound by such silliness, surely the path of least resistance is to use free multi-platform solutions (web based) such as google Slides. Unless of course you need built-in functionality that these packages don't provide - but this type of software is very accomplished and would take a huge effort to do better...

[FourthWorld]

FWIW, during most of my 8 years as LC Community Liaison, and for some years before, I used to make my presentations at LC events in LC. I even did a couple presentations at UbuCon events using the same system.

It wasn't very polished, given the difference between a tool and a product (Steven McConnell says, "With a tool it need only be possible to use it correctly, but with a product it should be impossible to use it incorrectly"). But it was fun to make, and let me integrate my writing tools with the outline builder, and add the effects I wanted.

All that said, even a simple tool (non-product) version was a fair bit of work to maintain. I've since moved on to using dedicated purpose-built presentation software made by larger teams (usually LibreOffice or Google Slides).

LiveCode is indeed an excellent platform for making a vast range of authoring systems. But the old rule applies: Software is almost always cheaper to buy than build. If your needs are generic, use generic off-the-shelf stuff.

But when you have specialized needs, LC can shine brighter than the morning star in letting you craft custom authoring environments.

Half of my 30-year career has been building authoring systems of one kind or another. Whether the goal is DVD-based training, kiosk systems, collaborative student performance guidance, or 100-author medical reference content for web publication, LC has enabled us to deliver these and many other systems far more cost-effectively than likely possible with other platforms.

[bn]

Building on the use of LiveCode as an editor, a logical extension is the creation of presentations. The LiveCode has many visual effects that you can use when transitioning between slides. The nice thing about slides written in LiveCode is that you are not bound to the particular device you created the presentation on. You can transfer the presentation to other hardware architectures and operating systems.

This text is taken verbatim from

https://livecode.com/what-else-can-you- ... -livecode/

to quote that lesson

Building on the use of LiveCode as an Editor/Drawing Tool, a logical extension is the creation of presentations.
Admittedly this does require a bit of coding in order to navigate between cards, but this is relatively trivial, and of course LiveCode has a large range of visual effects that you can use when transitioning between slides.
The nice thing about slides written in LiveCode is that you are not bound to the particular device you created the presentation on. You can transfer the presentation to other hardware architectures and operating systems.

I wonder what that tells us about CaseyChristensen.
It would be nice if Casey could explain this.

Kind regards
Bernd

[mwieder]

Having had to disastrously deal with the awful presentation software stack that LC required for the last in-person conference, I have to say that it's always possible to create bad tools. ymmv.

[FourthWorld]

Good catch, Bernd. Thanks. I'm locking this ancient thread, so it may return to the tomb of time from whence it came. The necomancer has been banished back to the gates of the underworld.