Slide presentations#

YMPrint can render a PDF slide deck. Turn on slide mode and every top-level heading becomes one slide on its own page: no _pagebreak needed. Slides can also be split into frames, so you can put text on the left and an image on the right.

A minimal deck#

_doc:
  page-size: [960, 540]    # 16:9, in points
  slides: true

_style:
  body:
    size: 24

How long have computers been in structural engineering?:
  - 1990s?
  - 1980s?
  - 1970s?

What you just saw:
  - "We have not created the software yet..."
  - The ideas are over 60 years old

Each top-level heading is the slide’s title and its content fills the slide. Nested headings stay on their slide.

Tip

Page sizes are in points (72 pt = 1 inch). [960, 540] is the PowerPoint widescreen size (13.33 × 7.5 in), where a 24–32 pt body reads well on a projector. A larger page such as [1920, 1080] works too, but scale your text sizes up to match. Admonitions, block quotes, captions and code blocks size themselves from the body text, so they follow along. See Custom page sizes.

Layouts and frames#

A layout is a named set of frames, which are rectangles on the slide. Pick a slide’s layout with _slide as its first item, then send content to a frame with _frame:

Here is what people were doing in 1966:
  - _slide: two-column
  - We have not created the software yet...     # → the first content frame ("left")
  - The ideas are over 60 years old
  - _frame: right                               # everything after this → "right"
  - _img:
      source: bbc_1966.png
      caption: BBC, 1966

Content before any _frame goes to the layout’s first frame other than title.
If the layout has a frame named title, the slide’s heading is drawn there. Otherwise the heading is drawn at the top of the first content frame. A title too long for its frame is shrunk to fit, like any other frame content. Heading sizes come from _style.
Blocks size themselves to the frame they are in, so an _img with width_ratio: 1 fills its frame’s width.
A slide without _slide uses the default layout.

Built-in layouts#

Layout	Frames
`default`	`body`: the whole slide.
`title`	`title` (top 55 %, text aligned to its bottom) and `body` below it. For cover slides.
`two-column`	`title` across the top 22 %, then `left` and `right` columns below it.

Defining layouts#

Define your own layouts under _doc.layouts. A layout with the same name as a built-in one replaces it.

_doc:
  page-size: [960, 540]
  slides: true
  layouts:
    image-right:
      title: [0, 0, 1, 0.22]
      text:  [0, 0.25, 0.55, 0.75]
      image:
        box: [0.6, 0.25, 0.4, 0.75]
        valign: middle
        overflow: shrink

Each frame is [x, y, width, height], measured from the top-left corner of the page template’s content box (the page inside its margins):

Values ≤ 1 are fractions of the content box (0.5 is half its width or height).
Values > 1 are points.

A frame written as a mapping can also set:

Key	Meaning
`box`	`[x, y, width, height]`, as above.
`valign`	`top` (default), `middle` or `bottom`: where the content sits within the frame.
`overflow`	What happens when the content doesn’t fit: `shrink` (default) scales it down to fit, `error` stops with a message naming the slide and frame, `truncate` clips it.

Layouts can also go in a project config file, so a whole set of decks can share them. Layouts defined in the document are added to those from config files.

Slide settings: `_slide`#

_slide must be the first item of a slide. Give it a layout name, or a mapping:

Thank you:
  - _slide:
      layout: title
      template: closing     # a page template from _doc.templates
  - Questions?

Setting	Meaning
`layout`	The layout to use. Default `default`.
`template`	The page template (name or 0-based index) for this slide’s margins and PDF background.

Settings apply to that slide only. A slide that doesn’t name a template uses the deck’s first template, so the first template listed under _doc.templates is the deck’s normal template and the first slide always uses it.

A _textstyle among a slide’s leading items restyles the whole slide, title included:

Fine print:
  - _textstyle: fine-print
  - _slide: two-column
  - ...

Things to know#

_slide and _frame only work in slide mode, and _frame only directly under a slide’s heading, not inside a sub-section.
You no longer need _pagebreak between slides. One inside a slide’s content is ignored, but a leftover top-level _pagebreak adds a blank page. To change a slide’s page template, use _slide: {template: ...}, not _pagebreak: <template>.
In a mapping-style slide, give repeated _frame keys an id after a second underscore to keep them unique: _frame_a: left, _frame_b: right.
A slide title that is a block key (a registered code such as _py, optionally followed by _id) is read as a block, so write Run it with `_py` rather than _py: run it.

Example deck#

Examples/Slides is a complete 1080p deck with its own title, section, content and closing backgrounds. See it on the Examples page.