Simple solutions for using markdown to create presentations exist e.g. Marp, Deskset, DeckTape.
I use markdown all the time
I use markdown all the time for writing.
- blog posts, I draft in markdown, convert to HTML (e.g. dillinger.io) then paste HTML into blogging tool
- client reports - I write quickly in markdown then format in different styles using Pandoc
I write all my daily notes in markdown because it is easy to read, and if I need to, then it is easy for me to convert to a ‘presentable format’ using Pandoc or
Dillinger.io
I create a ‘checklist’ and wanted to convert it into a presentation to upload to slideshare for marketing purposes. I didn’t fancy recreating the checklist into Powerpoint manually, so I started looking for a markdown based ‘slide’ solution.
Pandoc can do this as well, but it looked like a clunky approach.
A markdown based ‘slide’ solution
The first markdown based ‘slide’ tool I found was
Marp:
The only changes I had to make to my checklist was the addition of
--- to create slide breaks - when these are rendered in the checklist document they are horizontal lines, and don’t really detract from the on page checklist:
Within a few minutes:
- I had a slidedeck, in pdf format, that I could upload to slideshare.
- I could generate the slide deck from the same markdown document as the checklist document
Only one document to maintain going forward, but increased the marketing reach of the material.
Win.
And the next day I wanted Powerpoint or ODP
I started looking around for ways to convert the markdown into a ‘normal’ presentation format like powerpoint or ODP. I tried pasting the generated HTML presentation tools but that didn’t work as I wanted. I found odpdown, but haven’t tried it yet: (This might be useful for converting markdown to odp format)
Other Markdown Tools for HTML
As I searched the web I found a few other tools mentioned for markdown to HTML:
There are also a bunch of tools that let you embed your markdown in an HTML document and render it that way:
More professional additions
DeckTape is an open source tool that offers a PDF and image exporting functionality
Deskset is a commercial tool that supports more features, but only runs on Mac - cheap at only $29
Summary
I haven’t had time to evaluate all the tools above. At the moment, the simple pdf that
Marp generates is good enough for the type of material that I’m currently kicking out.
Since all the tools seem to use a similar approach, I’m going to continue to draft slides with
Marp and when I want something ‘professional’ I’m going to evaluate
Deskset.
I know that at some point I’m going to want to combine slides and longer form text and I think that
DeckTape will help me do that.
References
These two ycombinator pages had useful links and information:
