htmlslides Installation, Configuration, Education, Operation and Troubleshooting
Copyright (C) 2000 by Steve Litt, part of a GNU GPL distribution

DISTRIBUTED AS IS: NO WARRANTEE!
See file COPYING in the program directory, or obtain a copy of the GNU GPL from:

Free Software Foundation, Inc.
59 Temple Place, Suite 330
Boston, MA  02111-1307  USA
http://www.fsf.org/copyleft/gpl.html

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Installation

Note: The 0.5.0 (alpha) version of htmlslides works with UNIX, UNIX clones and nothing else. It's possible that later versions will support long-filename Windows and maybe VMS, but neither is a priority.
  1. unzip or gunzip/tar --extract to a directory
  2. Verify that the following files were placed in the newly created htmlslides directory:
    1. htmlslides
    2. Wpager.pm
    3. sample/
      1. slidetemplate.html
      2. toctemplate.html
      3. samplepresentation.html
    4. COPYING
    5. README
  3. With your favorite editor, modify the use lib '../' line in htmlslides to reflect the location of Wpager.pm by putting that directory (ending in a slash) between the single quotes. Although it can be a relative location, it's probably better to make it an absolute path.
  4. From the sample directory, issue the following command:
    ../htmlslides samplepresentation.html slidetemplate.html toctemplate.html
  5. Experiment with the input files, noting the effect on the output slideshow.

Configuration

To Correct Perl location

At the top of each .pl and .pm file in the program directory, there's a line starting with #!/usr/bin/perl -w. Be sure to set that line to the path for Perl on your machine. You can find the path to Perl by issuing the command: which perl.

To Correct the location Wpager.pm

The htmlslides program includes a use Wpager; statement. Thus it's required that Wpager.pm be in the @INC array at compile time. To force that, a use lib pathstring command is issued. You must change the pathstring to the absolute location of Wpager.pm. The path string must end in a slash. For instance, as shipped it's like this: 
use lib '../';
If the whatever directory is off the root, and Wpager.pm is kept in the htmlslides directory below whatever, the following is the correct statement in the htmlslides program: 
use lib '/whatever/htmlslides/';

Education

The best way to learn the htmlslides HTML slide show authoring tool is to start with the files in the whatever/htmlslides/sample directory. First back up all files in the sample directory so you can restore them upon mistake. Then run the following command, noting that it gives you the program's usage: 
../htmlslides
Now run the following command: 
../htmlslides samplepresentation.html slidetemplate.html toctemplate.html
Notice that Table of Contents file toc.html, and slide files 1.html, 2.html, 3.html and 4.html are created. Open them in a browser. Notice how the slideshow gets its content from samplepresentation.html, and its look from the template files. Experiment with all files. Try inserting a page by placing the page's title text between <address> and </address> tags. Note that anything below the title, but above the following title, is inserted in place of the zzzSLIDEzzz substitution string in the slide template. Experiment until you understand the product.

Operation

Select a unique directory for each slideshow. Author the slideshow by starting each slide with a title enclosed in an <address> </address> tag pair, and placing the intended contents of each slide below its title. Create the template files. The easiest way is to start with the sample files and modify as necessary. You can refresh the slideshow with the htmlslides command, with the first arg being the slideshow file, the second being the slide template, and the third being the toc template: 
htmlslides slideshowfile slidetemplate toctemplate

Troubleshooting

In general, read the documentation and use the Universal Troubleshooting Process as outlined at http://www.troubleshooters.com/tuni.htm. More will be added to this troubleshooting section as time permits.