

Show HN: We created a Mac app that creates presentations from Markdown - chriseidhof
http://www.decksetapp.com

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king_magic
I have a lot of hesitation about plopping down $20 without being able to try
it first (which is why I generally dislike buying apps on Mac App Store). Too
many unanswered questions. How does it handle text overflow? Is this going to
go away it two months? Are new features coming (maybe export to PPT)?

I'm going to give it a try anyway, since it would be pretty damn useful to be
able to whip up a presentation in a text file. I really hate arranging things
in Keynote/Powerpoint. It takes forever. It's definitely struck a chord with
me - so if I buy this, I hope that it gains more functionality.

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mikhailt
If you do, please let us know what it turns out.

~~~
karmajunkie
I did. Not wholly impressed. Needs way more options regarding the
presentation.

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davidroetzel
This seems to be quite nice. The generated slides look very good.

For everyone looking for a html based alternative: slideshow (or S9) [1] is a
ruby tool that also lets you generate slides from markdown. It has output
plugins for most of the popular html5/js-based presentation systems.

It is a nice tool but what I like even better is its mailing list [2]. It is a
wonderful place to learn about and discuss alternative and/or related
projects.

[1] [http://slideshow-s9.github.io/](http://slideshow-s9.github.io/) [2]
[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/webslideshow](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/webslideshow)

~~~
drmohundro
Reveal.js
([https://github.com/hakimel/reveal.js](https://github.com/hakimel/reveal.js))
also supports writing your slides in Markdown.

I've used it for the last 3 or 4 presentations I've given and it has worked
out well. It doesn't come with a huge variety of themes, but it is easy to
share - I can just push it out to Github Pages.

~~~
LaSombra
Reveal.js is practically the default presentation tool for some groups at my
workplace. Works quite well and looks quite good as well. Publishing is easy
and works on FF and Chrome.

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stdbrouw
Love it. I've been making my presentations in InDesign for a while now, and
exporting to PDF, and while the end result always looks great, I end up
spending an inordinate amount of time choosing the typeface and the look and
feel. Turning a Markdown document into a presentation by simply selecting a
theme and a color scheme sounds wonderful to me, especially considering the
themes are high quality.

One thing that's not entirely clear, though, is how the automatic layout
works. For example, does it colorize photos to match the color scheme? What if
you don't want it to? How does it resize photos when it needs to? Is text size
based on the amount of text in a slide? Is it fully automatic or can some
things be tweaked manually? I'm guessing this stuff has been thought through
pretty well, but OTOH "it automatically makes things look pretty" does sound a
little bit too good to be true.

~~~
chriseidhof
It does colorize photos according to the color scheme, however, you can also
turn this off: [http://www.decksetapp.com/support/#how-can-i-prevent-
deckset...](http://www.decksetapp.com/support/#how-can-i-prevent-deckset-from-
applying-an-image-filter)

Yes, images are resized, depending on what you want:
[http://www.decksetapp.com/support/#whats-the-best-way-to-
wor...](http://www.decksetapp.com/support/#whats-the-best-way-to-work-with-
images-in-deckset)

The text does not resize. You can make headers 'fit', which means they fill up
the available space. The only thing that automatically scales down the font
when needed is source code =). Being Objective-C developers, we really needed
this, haha.

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Angostura
Looks interesting. I certainly wouldn't buy before trying though. I'd strongly
suggest a crippled version that lets people platy with it - disable saving, or
watermark or ... you get the idea.

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bertil
This is very impressive.

One speculative question (because the Markdown would be mind-bogging for most
of your users, but) do you plan on including animations?

I know those have got a bad rap after your lame colleagues at a company too
big to be cool made whizz-bang into a series of horrible failed effects, but…
well done, animations can help to explain complex things, a lot. There was a
link to dozen of great examples yesterday on HN.

~~~
chriseidhof
We had a prototype, but it might take a while to do this right. So: maybe...
but first, there's a lot of other things to do...

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trumbitta2
Somewhat relevant: [http://remarkjs.com/](http://remarkjs.com/)

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jtokoph
Saw this and instantly thought presentations from a gist might be cool. Looks
like someone already has an implimentation:
[https://github.com/nzoschke/gistdeck](https://github.com/nzoschke/gistdeck)

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radiospiel
This looks absolutely great. I, however, would like to chime in for a
downloadable test version, just to see the workflow of how to actually build a
presentation.

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chriseidhof
And of course, I'm very happy to answer any questions!

~~~
tbassetto
I won't pay $20 without trying it first, otherwise it's like throwing money
out of the window… Is there any plan for a downloadable trial version?

~~~
brador
or they could offer a 24 hour or 7-day full refund?

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floriankugler
Unfortunately we cannot offer something like this through the App Store.
However, you can request a refund via Apple for a purchase in the App Store.
It's a bit of a hassle though...

~~~
Angostura
No. But you couldput a demo/crippled version on your Web site for people to
evaluate.

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ricricucit
i'm ok with giving you a cookie

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erikb
There are so many ways to create an App without making it Mac dependent. Why
did you choose that way? It's something I'm looking for but I'm like 99% on
Ubuntu and 1% on Windows nowadays.

*edit: From what I can see from the start page it's awesome! Would instantly buy an Ubuntuable version! 20 Bucks seems to be a good price.

~~~
chriseidhof
We are Mac developers, and we wanted to make use of all the great stuff that
Mac provides us in terms of text layout... But we are thinking of what we
could do to bring this to other platforms as well.

~~~
erikb
Thanks! I subscribed to the landing page.

