Slide Creation

From XOCPWiki

This page describes the current methods for creating slides for XO Classroom Presenter.

Converting existing presentations

Existing PowerPoint presentations (and other presentation types) can be manually converted to SVG slides using the following process:

• Create a PDF file from the PowerPoint presentation. On Mac OS X, PDF creation is built into the printing system. On Windows, software such as CutePDF Writer allows you to add a virtual PDF printer. Similar functionality exists as part of the CUPS printing system on Linux.
• Using a vector graphics program such as Adobe Illustrator or Inkscape, open the PDF file a slide at a time, and save as an SVG.

This method may have some issues with fonts. It also does not create the most efficient SVG files.

Creating slides from scratch

Inkscape can be used to create SVG slides directly. Make a new document and draw the slide, making sure to stick to fonts that are installed on the XO (DejaVu/Bitstream Vera). The dimensions of the slide do not matter, but you should stay close to a 4:3 aspect ratio. I've used 800x600 with success.

This method works properly with fonts, provided that the fonts used are available on the XO. It also generates more efficient SVG files than the convert-from-PDF method.

Using a bitmap image format

XO Classroom Presenter currently supports PNG and JPEG images. PowerPoint can be configured to export to a folder of PNG images, which can be used directly with XO Classroom Presenter.

This method is best for making the slides on the XO look exactly like they do in the original presentation, but file sizes may be larger than (most) SVG images.

Packaging into .cpxo format

One can create a .cpxo file from a folder containing the deck.xml and graphic files. cd to the directory containing these files, and then execute:

zip ../show.cpxo *.xml *.svg *.jpg *.png

This will create a file called show.cpxo outside of the directory, which should be a valid .cpxo file for use on the XO.