This is part of The Pile, a partial archive of some open source mailing lists and newsgroups.
To: Stas Bekman <stas@stason.org> From: Matt Sergeant <matt@sergeant.org> Subject: Re: Mod_perl tutorials Date: Thu, 14 Dec 2000 13:10:35 +0000 (GMT) On Thu, 14 Dec 2000, Stas Bekman wrote: > On Thu, 14 Dec 2000, Gunther Birznieks wrote: > > > >You can use my hackish Pod::HtmlPsPdf, which tries hard to help generate > > >slides. The only caveat it has now, is that the html2ps tool that it uses > > >generates not 100% complete PS, so when I run ps2pdf everything is cool, > > >but acroread has no option to rotate slides by 90% , so I have to use > > >ghostview instead during my classes. > > > > Well, the thing is that a real slide format like PPT is a bit more > > professional looking than PS/PDF as a format for slides. I'm not saying > > your slides aren't professional looking, but PS/PDF generated slides seem a > > bit plain. > > It doesn't look professional at all, so what? Aren't we talking about > creating a set of tutorials for mongers and user groups? What's important > is the information, not how fancy the background picture is. Thats where I think you're wrong. People care a *lot* about how things look. Case in point with AxKit - I had an old site up at xml.sergeant.org/axkit (I think its still there, I don't check). I didn't get much interest, maybe 20 page views a day or so. When (again with Robin's excellent designer help) I bit the bullet and redesigned at axkit.org the number of hits rose dramatically the very day I released the new design. And it wasn't just because of the domain name because AxKit wasn't a well known name at the time. It was because it looked good (or at least better - I'm still not happy with all that purple :-) The point being - we all despise marketing tactics of producing flashy web sites with pretty pictures because we're geeks. But it works - it draws people in. And provided you actually give them some good content to read once you've drawn them in I don't see too many negative points about it. (and if I'm honest, I've always shuddered a bit seeing you use gv for your slideshows - its just not a good slideshow application. Sorry Stas :-) === To: Stas Bekman <stas@stason.org> From: Matt Sergeant <matt@sergeant.org> Subject: Re: Mod_perl tutorials Date: Thu, 14 Dec 2000 13:11:44 +0000 (GMT) On Thu, 14 Dec 2000, Stas Bekman wrote: > On Thu, 14 Dec 2000, Matt Sergeant wrote: > > > On Wed, 13 Dec 2000, Robin Berjon wrote: > > > > > >Well Doug likes the site, and I'd assume someone is going to add a link > > > >fairly shortly to perl.apache.org. > > > > > > There already is, I think Stas added it. It's under "News and Resources for > > > the mod_perl world" in the toc. > > > > Hmm, Stas can you make this say "Take23: News and ..." - that would help > > get the name known. > > I sure can, but in the light of the latest suggestion of yet another > rename, may be we should wait a bit? It will always be take23, that I can assure you of. I'm a geek, and its a geeky name, and I'm very happy with it. The other domain names pointing at it or redirecting to it would be most welcome, but I'm not yet considering another rename. === To: Stas Bekman <stas@stason.org>, Matt Sergeant <matt@sergeant.org> From: Gunther Birznieks <gunther@extropia.com> Subject: Re: Mod_perl tutorials Date: Thu, 14 Dec 2000 23:55:34 +0800 At 02:27 PM 12/14/00 +0100, Stas Bekman wrote: >On Thu, 14 Dec 2000, Matt Sergeant wrote: > > > > creating a set of tutorials for mongers and user groups? What's important > > > is the information, not how fancy the background picture is. > > > > Thats where I think you're wrong. People care a *lot* about how things > > look. Case in point with AxKit - I had an old site up at > > xml.sergeant.org/axkit (I think its still there, I don't check). I didn't > > get much interest, maybe 20 page views a day or so. When (again with > > Robin's excellent designer help) I bit the bullet and redesigned at > > axkit.org the number of hits rose dramatically the very day I released the > > new design. And it wasn't just because of the domain name because AxKit > > wasn't a well known name at the time. It was because it looked good (or at > > least better - I'm still not happy with all that purple :-) > > > > The point being - we all despise marketing tactics of producing flashy web > > sites with pretty pictures because we're geeks. But it works - it draws > > people in. And provided you actually give them some good content to read > > once you've drawn them in I don't see too many negative points about it. > >remember I was talking about slides, not sites. Well, the nicer the slides the more they can be used outside of PM groups. The ideal would be something that (A) Can be made to look nice and (B) Is relatively brandable in case a conference has a particular look-and-feel they prefer authors using. Although I have to say I hate that practice. One year I gave a talk at Sybase98 -- they were doing this silly World Cup theme a couple years back and they forced all the slides throughout the conference to have a really annoyingly conspicuous soccerball on a purple background. I'm serious, the ball was massive. I digress. However, I am willing to concede that as a first cut, fancy slides are probably not worth it because the slides will change too often. Once v1 is released, then someone can transcribe the slides to PPT (or maybe a tool will exist by then) as a "stable release" if they want to (probably someone like me.) > > (and if I'm honest, I've always shuddered a bit seeing you use gv for > > your slideshows - its just not a good slideshow application. Sorry > > Stas :-) > >Well, that's what I have. I don't think that when you show bullets of text >it matters if you use PP or gv. I'm not giving marketing presentation, but >pure info comprised of text bullets and code snippets, gv does it just >right. I could include pictures if I had any... I think the slides are very good for your talks because they fit a style you are comfortable with. But there are people who aren't so comfortable with the plain look when giving a talk -- I am one of those people. I am not talking about ruining a slideshow with annoying animations, just making it look somewhat crisp with clean and mean graphics. It's a preference, but as noted above, I am willing to concede that the slides probably shouldn't be PPT at first cut because of the CVS issue as well as making it easier to have as many people make changes as possible. >On the technical presentations the speaker is what's important (and on >other presentation types as well). One can read slides/handouts at home >without coming to the conference at all. Yes that's true. And you are a great speaker. I think no one would doubt your enthusiasm about mod_perl when you talk. :) But that doesn't mean that this style of slides will work for all people. >Having nice slides requires a hell amount of time, which I unfortunately >don't have. So please bear with me. Sorry I didn't mean to bring it up as a sore point. Just wanted to point out that this is an advantage of a PPT format vs generated slides. Just as the advantage of generated slides is that, well, the slides actually exist sooner! Besides I believe even Tom Christiansen does the same thing (plain generated slides), so you certainly aren't alone in prefering to use generated slides as a speaker. And I do believe that if we start off with PPT format, the lack of coherent CVS support might make the project much slower than it should be. >BTW, if you want to give the base level intro to mod_perl with nicer cool >flashy slides, I won't stand on your way. It's just that nobody wants to >do that. I won't mind talking about more advanced things for a change. Yeah there's the rub... It's time consuming to produce such things just as its time consuming to produce nice web sites. Anyway, onto a tech question. Is there a recognized format for the Pod2HTML2PS converter where I could take a vector image and then make the PS import that vector image? That's one issue I have with gif and jpeg is that they don't resize well, which is also a potential issue for slideshows. ===