manim-present 0.0.4

Configuration-based HTML presentation producer using Manim.

Manim present

This a template for manim-based presentations that is manipulated by a YAML configuration file. Mainly geared towards AI agents interactions. The outcome is an HTML presentation with metadata put in a package.json file.

[!NOTE] Producing fancy but linear presentations with this tool should be easy and requires no Python coding. But this is at very early stages of development, so expect things change frequently

manim-present repository provides an example presentation to showcase implemented features, but here are some design principles:

1. The presentation flow is mostly linear. Often, the last rendered item is used as an anchor for the next one.
2. The presentation layout is kept lean and clean; with a title and a logo at the top, and a footer that has author, date and the event description.
3. You can segment the YAML configuration, as long as you include all relevant files in the main one:
   • It's recommended to configure Title and Thanks pages through a meta/config.yaml
   • It's also recommended to put default styling values in a default_styling/config.yaml
4. The YAML configuration supports python code as values when it makes sense.
   • For example; an angle in radians can be set to angle: "PI/4"
   • And there is some special templating for important parameters:
     • {{ title }} refers to the slide's title
     • {{ last }} refers to last rendered item
     • {{ small_size }}, {{ mid_size }} and {{ big_size }} can be used for font size settings
5. The YAML configuration supports two modes of slide population:
   • content through pre-defined steps listed below
   • hook which can read custom-made python functions to render Manim objects.

The content steps

Content slides are composed by steps:

• code: rendering code listings, supporting multi-step code reveals through modifications to specific code lines.
• custom: accepts single-line python manim-like code to produce Mobjects to render
• diagram: mostly-linear diagramming through rectangle nodes which can be grouped.
• image: media rendering for raster image formats; from the images folder.
• items: similar to Latex's enumerate, but needs an anchor object for positioning, with partial weighting and coloring
• mathtex: a Tex environment specifically for math mode. This is similar to tex.
• plot: simple scatter or line (or both) plotting. CSV files loaded from a data folder.
• reset: resets the slide, keeping layout elements.
• svg: media rendering for SVG objects, recommended for symbols and vector logos.
• tex: Latex rendering, recommended only for equations.
• text: simple text rendering, controlling font size and text color, with partial weighting and coloring
• video: renders an MP4 file and can set its playback speed and control its rendered height. Video duration is automatically deduced using the ffmpeg package. Video files are stored in the images folder.

All slide components adhere to a common position scheme (These translate to Manim, in this order):

• align_to: to align two objects in a direction. The target object can be the {{ last }} rendered item.
• next_to: moves the object next to the target, and applies a translation in specified direction
• shift: moves the object by the input vector (eg. 2*UP+RIGHT will move the object by (1, 2) units)
• rotate: rotates an object around an axis (Z-axis by default) by an input angle (in radians)

The hooks system

# config.yaml
slides:
  - title: A slide made with a hook function
    number: "1.0"
    hook:
      name: section0 # arbitrary name
      filename: hooks/section0.py # python file that defines example_slide()
      functions: example_slide

This configuration will look for hooks/section0.py file and load-in the example_slide function. The example_slide function should look like:

# hooks/section0.py
SOME_LOCAL_VAR = True
# self: is the presentation class
# cfg: is the hook configuration from config.yaml
# so, cfg.name, cfg.filename, and cfg.functions are reserved
# context: is the local context for the hook function 
def example_slide(self, cfg, context):
    var = context.get("SOME_LOCAL_VAR")
    txt = Text(f"VAR was {var} here")
    self.play(FadeIn(txt, run_time=self.fadein_rt))
    self.next_slide()

There are a few important notes for writing hooks:

• You get a Group of objects in self.layout including title (index 0), logo, and footer elements
• If you want to remove everything on a slide but keep the layout, call self.keep_only_objects(self.layout)
• Don't forget to set the run_time property for every animation you construct for a consistent behavior