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2. Syntax of the inputfile

2.1 A small introduction to XML

bla bla bla...


<markup property="value">
...
<markup>

...


<markup property="value"/>

...

2.2 The example presentation

Lets take a look at the example presentation. It begins with :


<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE prestimel SYSTEM "/usr/local/share/prestimel/prestimel.dtd">

The first line is the standard-header, which every XML-file must have. The second line defines the document type definition (DTD), which should be used. This DTD will be used by the XML-parser to validate the XML-file and to detect and report any errors or wrong markups.

The presentation itself is embedded within the markups <presentation> and </presentation>. Within these markup, all slides for the presentation will be defined.


<!-- The start of the presentation -->
<presentation>

...
<!-- blah blah blah -->
...

</presentation>

The presentation-file may contain any number of comment-lines, which are marked with <!-- and -->.

2.3 The definition of slides

A slide is defined with the <slide> markup, which must have the property title, which contains the title of the slide. Optional, a slide may have the following properties :

note

The URI to any HTML-file you want. This note may contain some detailled background-information for the slide.

latex

If set to "no", the slide will be skipped in the LaTeX-output. The default-value for this property is "yes".

2.4 The title slide

This slide contains all information necessary to produce the title page of the presentation. This nust be the first element of the presentation. Some sub-headlines, authors and a date can be specified. Its properties are the same than <slide> elements.

Example :


<titleslide title="Welcome to PresTiMeL">
  <h2>PresTiMeL is a tool to create HTML-presentations</h2>
  <h3>Click on the arrow below to continue</h3>
  <author name="Bernhard Trummer" email="bernhard.trummer@gmx.at"/>
  <date>14. April 2000</date>
</titleslide>

The <h2> and <h3> markups can be used for sub-headlines. At least one of these markups must be given.

The <author> markup contains the properties name and email, which must be given for each author specified. If you don't want to specify an author, this markup may be omitted.

The <date> markup just contains the date of the presentation. This markup may be omitted, if you don't need a date.

2.5 Grouping slides into sections

It is possible, to embed multiple slides inside of a section. For example :


<section title="Title of the section">
<slide title="Title of the first slide">
...
</slide>
<slide title="The second slide">
...
</slide>
</section>

As you can see, the <section> markup takes the property title, which will be shown on each HTML-slide inside this section. This section-title will also be a hyperlink to the first slide in this section.

If the title property is omitted, the title of the first slide in the section will be used as section-title. This may be useful, if you want to use an overview-slide for the section.

Please note, that the current implementation of the sectioning will mess up the background-graphic of the header. So you should disable the header-graphic with the commandline-option -H.


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