Abstract

The management and publishing of complex presentations is poorly supported by available presentation software. This makes it hard to publish usable and accessible presentation material, and to reuse that material for continuously evolving events.
Hotspot provides an XSLT-based approach to generate presentations out of a mix of general-purpose HTML and a small number of presentation-specific structural elements.
Using Hotspot, the management and reuse of complex presentations becomes easier, and the results are more user-friendly in terms of usability and accessibility.

Hotspot

Outline (Hotspot)

Motivation [2]
Hotspot [14]
1. Hotspot Extensions [2]
2. Kilauea [7]

Hotspot

One XML document for

one or multiple presentations

additional information (e.g., TOC and index preferences)

Mostly XHTML, with some custom elements:

<author short="F. Michel">Felix Michel</author>
<affiliation short="ETHZ"><a href="http://www.ethz.ch/"
             title="Website ETHZ">ETH Zürich</a></affiliation>
<date short="2007-09-24">September 24, 2007</date>
<copyright>2007 Felix Michel</copyright>
<presentation id="berlin">
 <title>Web-Based Presentations</title>

 <slide>
  <title>Introduction</title>
  <ul>
   <li>We present <strong>Hotspot</strong>, a 
   <ul>
    <li>powerful,</li>
    <li>customizable, </li>
    <li>and extensible</li>
   </ul> framework for generating and managing
   <ul>
    <li>complex,</li>
    <li>structured,</li>
    <li>web-based</li>
   </ul>presentations.</li>
  </ul>
 </slide>

Hotspot Architecture

Features: Listings

Hotspot provides for transclusion of external documents
- The foundation of this feature is an XSLT-based implementation of XInclude, the XInclude Processor (XIPr)

One application are listings, the inclusion of excerpts (e.g., of source code):

<listing src=berlin.xml
         line=186-192/>

The above listing results in the following HTML:

<li>One application are <em>listings</em>, 
the inclusion of excerpts (e.g., of source code):
<pre>&lt;listing src=<q>berlin.xml</q>
         line=<q>186-192</q>/&gt;</pre>
The above listing results in the following HTML:
<listing src="berlin.xml" line="186-192"/>
</li>

Hotspot Extensions

Outline (Hotspot Extensions)

Motivation [2]
Hotspot [14]
1. Hotspot Extensions [2]
2. Kilauea [7]

FormuLaTeX

The Formu $\LaTeX$ extension brings the full power of $\LaTeX$ to Hotspot

$\LaTeX$ code can directly be inserted in <tex/> elements:

<tex>$\calF{F}\{f(x)\} = F(u) = \\
\int_{-\infty}^{\infty}f(x)e^{-j2\pi{}ux}dx$</tex>

The Formu $\LaTeX$ extension then produces image files and alignment information, and the formula looks...

<img src=... alt=$\calF\{f(x)\} = ...
     style=height: 5.37ex; 
            vertical-align: -2.11ex; />

...just perfect: $\calF{F}\{f(x)\} = F(u) = \int_{-\infty}^{\infty}f(x)e^{-j2\pi{}ux}dx$

FormuLaTeX (II)

Furthermore, $\LaTeX$ packages can easily be included:
```
<tex pkg="amsmath">...</tex>
```
The Formu $\LaTeX$ extension is implemented in Perl and XSLT
- all you need is Perl and a working $\LaTeX$ installation
A caching mechanism ensures economic processing and no redundant HTTP transfers

Kilauea

Outline (Kilauea)

Motivation [2]
Hotspot [14]
1. Hotspot Extensions [2]
2. Kilauea [7]

Kilauea

Browser-based slideshow presentations
Implemented with Javascript and CSS

Cross-browser operation

No substantial browser-dependencies

Tested Browser Chart:

Browser	Version	OS
Firefox	1.5	OS X 10.3
	2.0	OS X 10.4
		Windows XP
		Linux
Camino	1.0	OS X 10.4
Safari	2	OS X 10.4
Safari	3 beta	OS X 10.4
Konqueror	2.4	Linux
Shiira	2.0 beta	OS X 10.4
Opera	8.45	Linux
	9.22	Linux
	9.22	OS X 10.4
MSIE	6	Windows XP
MSIE	7	Windows XP

No plugins required

Kilauea Features

True hypertext:
- Structured content (including parts and sub-parts)
- Logical, not physical, markup
- Hyperlinks (link to parts, slides, and everything else)
  In the latter case, the hyperlink target is formatted via:
```
#fourier:target { border: 1ex solid #36C; }
```
Flexible (wide variety of initialization configurations)
Customizable (e.g., via CSS)
Extensible (sophisticated plugin architecture)
It is possible to embed presentations

Kilauea Javascript

Localization support
Small footprint (24 kB packed)
Backwards-compatible with Slidy
State-of-the-art Javascript:
- Inserts only one variable into the global symbol space
- Browser-independant, W3C-like event model
- → no problems with third-party Javascript
Offers custom events (e.g., slideChange events)

Kilauea Plugin Architecture

Plugins unleash the true power of Kilauea
Plugin development is easy with Kilauea, but almost impossible for existing presentation software
Extensive developer documentation eases plugin development
Architectural details:
- Plugins are identified by URIs
- Object-oriented: each plugin is a class, which inherits some utility properties
- Plugins are loaded at run-time
Currently available plugins include:
- remote: Support for distributed, remote presentations
- logger: Sophisticated logging facilities
- doublescreen: Presentator mode with two browser windows

Remote Presentations

Logging Facilities

Sophisticated logging and evaluation of presentations
Export as HTML or CSV

Transitions

Currently, we are working on a plugin which enables basic transition effects
- This might not seem to be very important, but it is a nice-to-have for moments like today's presentation
- Once the transition plugin has been included, transitions can be assigned to slides in a declarative way:

<div class=slide transition:fade</div>
  <h1>Transitions</h1>
  <ul>
    <li>Currently, we are working on a...
    ...

Outlook

A rich-text editor will be indispensable in order to lower the barrier-to-entry for users
Import from other formats (e.g., .ppt) would be nice, (but may be hard to implement)
Better documentation, installation guidelines, and online help

Conclusion

The chief advantages of Hotspot are:
1. Structured (collections of) presentations
2. True hypermedia
3. Extensibility

Web-Based Presentations

XML-Tage Berlin 2007

Erik Wilde, iSchool, UC Berkeley

Philippe Cattin, ETH Zürich

Felix Michel, ETH Zürich

September 24, 2007; Berlin, Germany

Abstract

Introduction

A Word of Precaution First

Motivation

Outline (Motivation)

Presentation Software Today

Use Case Scenario

Hotspot

Outline (Hotspot)

Hotspot

Hotspot Architecture

Features: Listings

Hotspot Extensions

Outline (Hotspot Extensions)

FormuLaTeX

FormuLaTeX (II)

Kilauea

Outline (Kilauea)

Kilauea

Kilauea Features

Kilauea Javascript

Kilauea Plugin Architecture

Remote Presentations

Logging Facilities

Transitions

Outlook

Conclusion