manim-present 0.0.8

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 a short 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.
6. If footer.slide_counter configuration item is True, a slide counter over the total count of slides will be displayed. It is recommended to keep this as False (default) and turn it on as the last iteration on the presentation. If this setting is turned on, there will be excessive re-rendering (cached animations get invalidated because the total number of slides changes as you add more). It gets increased on each reset_step.
7. If you want cite papers, a references.bib file must be present at the root folder (where config.yaml is located)
   • Prefix entry ID with @@ to cite it.
   • More info about this mechanism in the dedicated section bellow.

Supplying slide contents

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

Managing Tex-like bibliography

If you want to cite other people's work, you must compile a references.bib file that contains all entries to be cited.

In text or items elements on the config.yaml, you can prefix bibliography entry ID with @@ to cite it.

For example, if the references.bib file has an entry @misc{authorYear, ...}, you would use @@authorYear to cite it. The citation behavior/styling can be configured through:

# for example; in default_styling/config.yaml
bibliography:
  style: alpha # style of the bibliography entry in the footer, styles from pybtex python package
  font_size_multiplier: 0.9 # multiplied to get bibliography entry font size relative to very small font size
  line_length: 5 # separation line for bibliography entry. A 0 will omit the separation line
  line_color: "self.main_color" # color of separation line, these can be manim colors, hex colors, or from color presets.

You are only allowed to have at-most two cited papers per slide "overlay". The first one will be positioned on the right, and the second one will be on the left.