fastslides

Render a Markdown file, a Jupyter notebook or a Solveit dialog as HTML slides, and print them to PDF.

pip install fastslides
fastslides talk.md              # opens the slides in a browser
fastslides talk.ipynb --export  # writes talk.html and talk.pdf next to it

The HTML is one self-contained file: local images inlined, arrow keys, Space and PageUp/PageDown move between slides, and the slide number is in the URL, so a reload keeps your place. --export also prints the page to a 16:9 PDF with a headless Chrome, which must be installed.

Writing slides

A slide deck is an ordinary document. A line containing only --- starts a new slide; headings never do. In a notebook or dialog, a note cell containing only --- breaks between cells. When any cell is exported (nbdev's #| export, or the Solveit export flag), only exported cells are rendered, so a working dialog can hold drafts and prompts beside the deck; --no-exported renders every cell. Code cells render as highlighted code with their stored outputs beneath.

Two columns: wrap the blocks in a fenced div.

::: {.cols}
![](logo.png)

- first point
- second point
:::

::: {.cols .narrow} makes the left column a quarter of the width. An image on its own line shrinks to the space left on the slide. A slide that still does not fit scrolls, which is the cue to cut it.

fastslides --help lists the options, which are viewmd's: --refs, --hl, --head my.css for your own styling, --math.

How it works

mdhtml parses the Markdown (and aidialog turns notebooks into Markdown first). mdhtml2slides cuts the parsed tree at top-level hr elements and renders each group with mdhtml2html, so every Markdown feature mdhtml supports works on a slide. The page is viewmd's, plus about forty lines of CSS and JS.