PackageDescription: HotDraw Slides


Hot Draw Slides

Last published: October 1, 2009 by 'niallr'

Defines 4 Classes
Extends 6 Classes

First stab at a slide presentation tool. Lots of things missing.

What's present:
The editor (Launcher->Tools->HotDraw->Slide Presentation Editor)
Left-hand pane displays slides wich look like RectangleFigures.
Right-and pane displays selected slide or per-presentation default slide if no slide selected.
Editor starts up with a copy of the MasterSlide, a system-wide initial slide.
Can set any slide as default (affects just the specific presentation) or master (affects subsequent new presentations)

What's missing:
Slides have a fixed 4 to 3 aspect ratio (e.g. 1024x768,640x480). The intent is for the slide contents to scale to watever the size of the window is so that a slide's appearance doesn't change depending on screen resolution. But there is no scaling yet. Note that Martin Kobetic has done font scaling work for his presentation framework. HotDraw doesn't do scalong. So one either adds scaled subclasses or add optional scaling to all figures. Note that ScreenGraphicsContext doesn't do scaling so one has to write scaling one's self.

This framework should merge with Martin Kobetic's Presenter framework as HotDraw has wysiwyg editing and a rich set of graphics figures. As yet there are no
- importers for Presenter slides to auto-convert presenter presentations
- workspace figures to allow execution of code within a presentation (the killer app that gives Martin's fwk its edge)

There is no presentation view which just shows a presentation

The text editor is not as rich as VisualWorks' one and not nearly rich enough for a presentation editor.
- Emphasis changes bold, italic, underline and stroke-out must be applicable independently (so one can have bold + italic).
- Point size must be specifiable independently from text style
- text style (i.e. font family) must be specifiable independently from point size
- cursor + home/page keys should work, not throw an exception

Must be able to load and save slides. BOSS is less than ideal . Would prefer textual (XML?, specific per-figure storeString). If binary, parcel format would be better than BOSS.

Martin's fwk has extras such as elapsed time display. Need o find out full set of desirable features in the fwk and add them to this wish list.