manim-simplex 0.2.0

Manim plugin: theme tokens, mobjects, slide hierarchy, deck manifest schema.

manim-simplex

The Manim plugin half of Simplex: theme tokens, reusable mobjects, slide hierarchy, deck manifest schema, and the manim.plugins entry-point. Distributed on PyPI as manim-simplex.

The lecture-portal platform (CLI, deck discovery, render orchestration, web builder) lives in the sibling simplex package; both contribute modules to the shared PEP 420 simplex/ namespace.

What ships here

Module	Contents
simplex.plugin	activate() -- the manim.plugins entry-point. Applies the active theme to manim.config.
simplex.section	SimplexSectionType enum -- the slide-hierarchy strings written into Manim's sections JSON. Manim-free.
simplex.manifest	DeckManifest, MainSlide, Subsection Pydantic models -- the cross-package contract consumed by the simplex web builder. Manim-free.
simplex.theme	Theme, Palette, Typography, Spacing, Motion, LatexProfile, WebPalette, active_theme, get_active_theme, presets, render_web_css.
simplex.engine	Animation primitives -- Region, Remove, clear_scene, exit_for, register_exit, set_exit_animation, HighlightResult, apply_theme_defaults, plus the glyph_map, ghost_fade, dynamics, geometry, code, text, scaling, debug submodules.
simplex.mobjects	Node, Edge, ArrayMob, ArrayEntry, ArrayPointer, OutlineProgressBar.
simplex.slides	BaseSlide, OutlineScene, OutlinePart, Chrome, make_chrome.

Install

uv add manim-simplex
# or
pip install manim-simplex

System dependencies (texlive, ffmpeg, cairo, pango) are the same as Manim's -- see the Manim install guide.

Quick start

# decks/<your-deck>/manim.cfg
[CLI]
plugins = simplex
save_sections = True

from manim import MathTex
from simplex.slides import BaseSlide, make_chrome
from simplex.theme import presets

class Hello(BaseSlide):
    def setup(self) -> None:
        super().setup()
        chrome = make_chrome(presets.DASTIMATOR_DARK, self.region, header="Hello")
        self.add_to_canvas(**chrome.mobjects)
        self.region = chrome.body_region

    def construct(self) -> None:
        from manim import ORIGIN, Write
        eq = MathTex(r"e^{i\pi} + 1 = 0")
        self.region.place(eq, ORIGIN)
        self.play(Write(eq))
        self.next_slide(name="Hello")

uv run manim-slides render path/to/your_deck/scene.py Hello

Slide hierarchy

BaseSlide.next_slide writes a SimplexSectionType value into Manim's native section JSON. The web builder reconciles that with manim-slides' PresentationConfig to build a main/sub tree.

• self.next_slide(name="Title") -> MAIN slide named "Title".
• self.next_slide() as the first call -> MAIN slide auto-named after the scene class with PascalCase boundaries spaced out (DFSLecture → "DFS Lecture"; no warning).
• self.next_slide() after a named main -> SUB slide.
• self.next_slide(..., loop=True) -> the LOOP variant.
• self.next_slide(..., section_type="simplex.main.skip") -> explicit override always wins.

Outline slides

OutlineScene composes typed OutlinePart objects into an animated BaseSlide outline. Each part owns already-built Manim mobjects for its feature title, compact label, and optional visual. Progress dots are positioned with self.region.linspace(RIGHT, n) defaults, so edge margins and inter-dot gaps are equal.

from manim import Circle, Square, Tex
from simplex.engine.text import Caption
from simplex.slides import OutlinePart, OutlineScene

class Outline(OutlineScene):
    def __init__(self, **kwargs):
        super().__init__(
            parts=[
                OutlinePart(Tex("Research Question"), Caption("Question"), Circle()),
                OutlinePart(Tex("Algorithms"), Caption("Algorithms"), Square()),
            ],
            **kwargs,
        )

Theme

Themes are frozen Pydantic models -- the same instance produces:

1. Manim defaults (via apply_theme_defaults, called by the plugin).
2. A TexTemplate (via LatexProfile.as_tex_template).
3. CSS variables for the web portal + RevealJS HTML (via render_web_css(theme.web_palette)).
4. The darcula Pygments style (registered by the plugin).

Switch themes per-scope with active_theme:

from simplex.theme import presets
from simplex.theme.context import active_theme

from manim import Tex

with active_theme(presets.ACADEMIC_LIGHT):
    label = Tex("This Tex picks up the academic light palette.")

Cross-package contract

manim-simplex owns the manifest schema; simplex imports it:

from simplex.manifest import DeckManifest, MainSlide, Subsection

When the schema bumps schema_version, the web builder hard-fails on unknown versions with a pointer at the manim-simplex upgrade. This keeps the two repos honest about their contract.

Why a separate distribution?

The plugin surface (mobjects + theme + entry-point + manifest schema) is reusable independently of the lecture-portal pipeline. Splitting them lets the plugin be a thin dependency for users who want to render slides without pulling in Typer, watchfiles, Jinja, and the web builder stack.

Python's PEP 420 implicit namespace packages merge the two distributions at import time. Neither wheel ships src/simplex/__init__.py, so from simplex.engine import Remove resolves regardless of which wheel contributed the module.

Development

Requires Python 3.13+ and uv.

git clone https://github.com/shlomi-perles/manim-simplex.git
cd manim-simplex
uv sync --all-extras
uv run pre-commit install
uv run pytest -q
uv run ruff check .
uv run basedpyright

Examples under examples/ are runnable demo scenes; they double as documentation and CI smoke tests:

uv run manim -pql examples/hello_slide.py HelloSlide

License

MIT.