mdtoimpress

Markdown To Impress

A work in progress...

What is it

mdtoimpress is a tool to convert markdown to impress pages. Independent layout engines can exist to allow for different styles of presentation.

How to install

• Firstly you should install nodejs
• Then install it use $ npm install -g mdtoimpress

How To Use

$ mdtoimpress␍␊

  Must have input and output arg!

  Usage: mdtoimpress [options]

  Options:

    -h, --help             output usage information
    -V, --version          output the version number
    -i, --input <path>     Input markdown file path
    -o, --output <path>    Impress html file output path
    -l, --layout <layout>  layout engine to use (linear, radial)
    -v, --verbose          Switch on verbose output

  Examples:

    $ mdtoimpress -i file.md -o file.html -l linear

Layout engines

There are Three Layout Engines

Manual Layout

• use ------ to separate each slide
• use comment to set impress attr, such as <!-- x=0 y=0 rotate=0 -->
• this page is made by markdown-impress use this markdown. $ mdtoimpress -i file.md -o file.html -l manual

Automatic Layout

• Use a blank line and hash-heading (i.e. ## example ) to separate each slide

Linear Layout

• Slides are positioned left-to-right automatically $ mdtoimpress -i file.md -o file.html -l linear

Radial Layout

• Slides are positioned in a circle according to heading depth $ mdtoimpress -i file.md -o file.html -l radial

Hacking

Use in your code

var fs = require('fs');
var mtoi = require('markdown-impress');
var content = mtoi('file.md');
fs.writeFileSync('file.html', content);

Writing a new Layout Engine

The best way to write a new layout engine is to clone one that's there already and change it until it fits your requirements. If you copy linear.js and call it vertical.js then it would be used with -l vertical without any more configuration.

Layout Engines export four things.

• splitter - a regular expression used to identify a slide boundary e.g. /^(#+.*)$/mg
• keepSplitterMatch - a boolean which if true will keep the content that's matched by the regex. If false whatever is matched is discarded and forms no part of the final document.
• overview is a function which, if present, is called in order to add an additional overview slide to the deck.
• layout is a function that receives the markdown and returns HTML.

Who made it?

The original code was by steel1990. This was missing a few fetures needed by ear1grey who added selectable layout engines, so that the original comment-based layouts could still work, but also, completely automatic layouts (capable of formatting pure unmodified MD) could also be laid out.