tpp - the command line presentation tool

http://linuxconfig.org/tpp-the-command-line-presentation-tool

There is no need to install tons of software in order to create a nice and informative presentation. tpp is a simple to use command line presentation tool which allows you to create a fancy text based slide show presentation and share it with your colleges or students as an ordinary ASCII text file. tpp supports colors, slide-in, source code output, animated command line execution and a real time command executions all available from within your terminal.


Let's create a simple presentation consisting of 2 slides. First, create a new text file with some arbitrary name like sample.tpp. Once ready, start with the presentation header:

--author by LinuxConfig.org
--title TPP Sample Perl Presentation
--date today
--heading Where is Perl used?

The above will create presentation header including author, title, current date and heading, all centered in the middle of the page. To emulate a "break" tpp use 3x hyphen syntax. Anytime you put --- into your tpp source code a SPACE press will be needed to continue with the presentation. Next we create a list of item using different colors and slide-in from top and left. Make sure to reset foreground color to white at the end for the list:

---
--color green
  * Web sites and Web services 
---
--beginslideleft
--color blue
  * Data analysis
---
--endslideleft
--beginslidetop
--color red
  * System administration
--color white
--endslidetop

The above will create nice slide-in animation for last to items and --- will ensure the correct manual timing by presenter. --center command can be used to display centered headings.

---
--center Source Code

Next, we display a source code using --beginoutput command. This will put a nice frame around the code. If you need to display source code lines one by one feel free to include --- between the lines.

--beginoutput

#!/usr/bin/perl

print "Hello World!";

--endoutput

What follows next is a animated command line execution. In this case tpp will animate command typing and display in output on the next line. This is one a real time execution as you will need to include your output to tpp's source file:

--center Shell Output
---
--beginshelloutput
$ perl -e 'print "Hello World!\n"'
Hello World!
--endshelloutput

So far all about examples were displayed on a single slide. tpp allows for multiple slides presentation and this can be achieved by --newpage command.

---
--newpage
--boldon
--revon
--center Please check Perl's Manual Page for more info

For additional decorating purposes the above code uses --boldon command to make text bold and --revon to produce reverse black-on-white text style. For more information about ttp visit tpp's manual page:

$ man tpp

SOURCE CODE SUMMARY:

--author by LinuxConfig.org
--title TPP Sample Presentation
--date today
--heading Where is Perl used?
---
--color green
  * Web sites and Web services 
---
--beginslideleft
--color blue
  * Data analysis
---
--endslideleft
--beginslidetop
--color red
  * System administration
--color white
--endslidetop
---
--center Source Code
--beginoutput

#!/usr/bin/perl

print "Hello World!";

--endoutput
--center Shell Output
---
--beginshelloutput
$ perl -e 'print "Hello World!\n"'
Hello World!
--endshelloutput
---
--newpage
--boldon
--revon
--center Please check Perl's Manual Page for more info