Thoughts on AbiShow

(since I am bored at school and have time to think of such things)

by Ryan Pavlik

Silly Person Still Running Mainly Windows

Revision 1.0 (20040111)

Simplest Differences between a Word Processor and a Presentation App

The pages in a presentation are in proportion to screen size.

Views in a presentation may contain additional data not found in default views (Notes, handout information.

Templates per page, as well as/opposed to per document.

No real margins on default view.

Full-screen display with "click to advance"

Timing on each page.

Nested bullets (outline) with Tab and Shift-tab to change indent (though this could be implemented in a word processor as an outline function, and would be very nice :-) )

Drag-to-reorder "slide sorter" type view.

Bringing it up to level with Other Presentation Apps

Transitions between pages.

Pen markup during full-screen display.

Animation and sound on frames

Presentation Outline type view that takes "special" named frames from each slide and assembles into an outline.

Ability to switch "Presentation Designs" (stylesheets?)

Rocking the Socks off Other Apps

Saving pen markups as optional layer.

XML/XHTML export

Abi plugin API

BiDi

Localization jump-started

Cross-platformness and slimnitudinousness (light-weight)

Other things through plugins?

Other Thoughts

With such a rocking word-processor base, AbiShow has a huge head start. If some of the code (plugins, etc) could be shared, and other parts kept similar, we would have a massive ease-of-use advantage as well, since it would work the same as AbiWord. Really, AbiShow isn't that far off from what we have right now, and a surprising amount could probably remain the same between the two (outlines, full-screen view (call it Paper Preview or something :-) ) Enchant, Page Templates (beginning of chapter or something, it could become almost page-layoutish...), I'm sure you can think of more...). If I was a bit better at C++, and a little more familiar with the code tree, I could probably implement the basics myself. Sadly, I'm not, but if someone can toss some work in and what not, this could be great. I'd be more than willing to make templates/"Presentation Designs" (I rarely use those in PowerPoint unmodified as it is...).

I think if at first changes are made that can be shared between AbiWord and -Show, (Outlines, etc), it would be best...

Final Thoughts

Here's hoping my favorite Word Processor can become my favorite Presentation App that is as easy to use as a Word Processor because it mostly is one!