Decker

A markdown based tool for slide deck creation.

Installation from source

1. Install stack and Node.js (for npm)
2. Clone this repo.
3. cd decker
4. git submodule update --init --recursive
5. make install

Note:

Decker will be installed under ~/.local/bin which is default not recognized by your terminal. If decker is not found by your terminal, add the path to the corresponding config file. For zsh (default for macos) do the following steps. Run from the terminal:

1. touch ~/.zshrc
2. echo PATH=$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH > ~/.zshrc
3. source ~/.zshrc

Installation from source on Windows

Instead of a makefile we use a PowerShell script on Windows to install decker from source

1. cd decker
2. .\bin\build.ps1

If you want to copy decker to C:\Program Files (x86) you can call .\bin\build.ps1 -local. This needs a PowerShell session with administrator rights.

To then call decker from anywhere on the PowerShell command line create a PowerShell profile file, add the following line, and restart your PowerShell session!

$Env:Path += ";${Env:ProgramFiles(x86)}\Decker\bin"

Note:

Windows Antivirus Protection has a high impact on compilation time. Add the following directories as exclusions to safe about 20-40% compilation time.

• Haskell stack build tool: usually under C:\sr
• Haskell compiler: %AppData%\Local\Programs\stack\x86_64-windows\ghc-x.x.x\bin
• this repository

Development

Haskell

Use appropriate tooling. I use:

• Visual Studio Code with the following plugins:
  • Haskell Language Server
  • hindent-format

Templates and CSS

To interactively work on the template, CSS and Javascript files in resource/template and resource/support run Decker as stack run decker server. This will automatically incorporate all changes and reload the documents in the browser.

External tools

Decker uses a few external tools that need to be installed on the system to use the full functionality:

• ssh for publishing slide decks and resources

• rsync for publishing slide decks and resources

  • Note: openssh Server do not work properly with rsync for Windows. Use cygwin and its terminal to perform decker publish.

• LaTeX with pdflatex to generate LaTeX in PDF-files and embedded Tikz figures

• Graphviz to generate graphs using dot

• Gnuplot to generate graphs using dot

• pdf2svg to generate SVG files from PDF documents

• libbzip2-dev

• NodeJS to install JavaScript dependencies

• coreutils the GNU coreutils

Installation of external tools on macOS

Use Homebrew to install most of them.

brew install rsync graphviz gnuplot pdf2svg yarn coreutils

For the rest follow instructions on their respective webites.

To confirm that you have installed all of the required external tools, run the following command in a terminal window:

decker check

Installation of external tools on Linux

Use Ubuntu's Advanced Packaging Tool (APT) to install external tools.

apt-get update && apt-get install -y texlive-full plantuml gnuplot graphviz libbz2-dev pdf2svg rsync ssh libtinfo-dev libgmp3-dev zlib1g-dev

To confirm that you have installed all of the required external tools, run the following command in a terminal window:

decker check

Usage

Decker behaves very much like a build tool. It works recursively on the current directory and all subdirectories. Markdown files ending on .md in those directories are processed and converted to either a Reveal.js slide show, a HTML document, or a PDF document, depending on the file name.

• *-deck.md

  Files with this ending are processed as silde decks. From one source file potentially four different targets can be generated:

  • *-deck.html A reveal.js based slide show
  • *-handout.hmtl A HTML document containing the speaker notes to the slide show.
  • *-deck.pdf A PDF version of the slide show
  • *-handout.pdf A PDF version of the handout

• *-page.md

  Markdown files ending on *-page.md are translated into corresponding HTML or PDF documents.

Decker targets

• decker version

  Prints the current Decker version and branch as well as the current pandoc version.

• decker help

  Prints a help document to stdout in Markdown format.

• decker info

  Prints information about the current project's directories, the targets (files which will be generated) and the meta data options which are found in top level decker.yaml file.

• decker html

  Builds HTML versions of all available documents.

• decker decks

  Builds only HTML slide decks.

• decker pdf

  Builds PDF versions of all documents.

• decker pdf-decks

  Builds PDF versions of all slide decks.

  To use decker pdf or decker pdf-decks, Google Chrome has to be installed.
  Windows: Currently decker pdf does not work on Windows. Please add print: true or menu: true to your slide deck and use the print button in the menu or on the title slide. MacOS: Follow the Google Chrome installer instructions. Google Chrome.app has to be located in either /Applications/Google Chrome.app or /Users/username/Applications/Google Chrome.app Alternatively you can add chrome to $PATH.
  Linux: chrome has to be on $PATH.

• decker --watch

  Builds HTML versions of all documents and then watches for document changes. Each change to a watched document triggers a rebuild. Watching can be terminated with ^C.

• decker --server

  Like decker watch. Additionally a local web server is started that serves the generated HTML files. The *-deck.html file is openend in the browser. Changed files are reloaded in the browser. (still requires livereloadx)

• decker example

  Write a few example files to the current directory. To start exploring Decker type

  $ decker example
  $ cd example
  $ decker --server

  and make some changes to the Markdown files.

• decker clean

  Recursively removes all generated files from the current directory (i.e. the public folder). Also removes cached resources.

• decker publish

  Publish the generated files to a remote location using rsync if the location is specified in the meta data. The keys rsync-destination.host and rsync-destination.path specify the publishing destination.

Contributions

Pull requests

Contributions are accepted via pull requests. Before working on a feature, please write up an issue and discuss it with the other developers. For each implemented feature, increment the version number in package.yaml. Breaking changes increment the second number. Fixes increment the third number.

Tooling

Use appropriate tooling. We use Visual Studio Code with the Haskell Language Server plugin.

Haskell source code formatting

Haskell soure code readability depends heavily on consistent formatting conventions. Formatting is automated using the excellent ormolu formatter via the Haskell Language Server.

License

See COPYING.

License

See COPYING.