prezento 1.0

Another text based (rst) presentation tool

prezento is a powerful, offline-first slide generator that converts reStructuredText (RST) files into beautiful, interactive HTML presentations.

It is a complete rewrite of prezentprogramo (a former fork of Hovercraft) with modern architecture, improved substep handling, and a switch from impress.js to b6plus.

Table of Contents

• Features

• Why prezento?

• Sample Slides

• Assets Requirement

• Installation

• Usage

• Project Structure (Development)

• Contributing

• License

• Acknowledgments

• Author

Features

• Clean and semantic RST-based slide authoring

• Powerful substep / incremental reveal system with fine-grained control

• Multiple output formats:

  • Standard HTML (for direct PDF printing)

  • Substep-expanded HTML (step-by-step handouts)

  • b6plus presentation mode (for projectors / live talks)

• Embedded Graphviz diagram support (yographviz directive)

• Full offline capability

• Custom CSS and JavaScript support

• High-quality print/PDF output

Why prezento?

The original prezentprogramo was heavily tied to impress.js and had complex indentation requirements. After years of use, I decided to rewrite it from scratch with the following goals:

• Better substep semantics (especially for lists and nested content)

• Modern docutils usage (no deprecated APIs)

• Cleaner code architecture

• Switch to b6plus — a lightweight and actively maintained presentation library

• Easier maintenance and future extensibility

This version is not compatible with original Hovercraft or prezentprogramo RST files, but it offers a much better authoring experience.

Sample Slides

You can see real-world examples of prezento in use here:

https://github.com/yoosofan/slide

Assets Requirement

The generated HTML slides require the following assets:

• assets/simple.css

• assets/b6plus.js

Important: After generating HTML files, you must have an assets/ folder next to them containing these two files.

These assets are taken from the b6plus project. You can update them whenever a newer version is released.

Installation

From source (recommended during early development):

git clone https://github.com/yoosofan/prezento.git
cd prezento
pip install -e .

Usage

Basic usage:

prezento your_slides.rst

This will generate three output files in the same directory:

• your_slides.html — Standard version

• your_slides.substep.pdf.html — Step-by-step version (good for printing)

• your_slides.presentation.html — b6plus interactive version

Options:

prezento input.rst -o output.html
prezento input.rst --no-substep          # Skip substep PDF version
prezento input.rst --no-presentation     # Skip b6plus version

Project Structure (Development)

prezento/
├── src/
│   └── prezento/
│       ├── __init__.py
│       └── main.py
├── docs/
│   └── dev-history/
└── tests/

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! This project is still in active development.

If you want to help, please:

• Open an issue for bugs or feature requests

• Submit pull requests for improvements

• Test with complex slide decks

License

This project is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0 (GPLv3).

See the LICENSE file for the full license text.

You are free to use, modify, and distribute this software under the terms of GPLv3.

Acknowledgments

• Inspired by Hovercraft and the original prezentprogramo

• Uses b6plus for presentation mode. https://www.w3.org/Talks/Tools/b6plus/slides.zip

• Built on top of docutils

Author

Ahmad Yoosofan

• GitHub: https://github.com/yoosofan

• Slides: https://github.com/yoosofan/slide