
mmaker v1.1
Mark Allman (mallman@grc.nasa.gov)
NASA GRC/BBN Tenologies
July, 2002


I have recently figured out that using LaTeX for slides is way too
annoying, confusing and frustrating.  For a long while Shawn
Ostermann's smaker pre-processor script proved quite useful in
allowing me to easily construct slides.  But, recently even smaker
has become annoying -- through no fault of its own.  You see
anything in LaTeX is this big collection of goop.  Nobody really
understands the goop.  It's damn hard to do anything in a
non-default sort of way.  Have you looked at LaTeX style files?  I
rest my case.  The only problem with this goop is that nobody has
actually invented any better goop for document preparation under
unix.  So, we live with it and we give each other gold stars when we
figure out how to do something as trivial as increasing the height
of a row in a table just a touch.

So, last week I spent 20 minutes figuring out why a slide with no
title would contain a title box and figuring out how to make said
slide have no title box (which involved relocating one line in a
style file, thank you).  And, after I had earned my gold star for
the day I ran LaTeX which promptly told me that I was using "\\"
wrong.  I have been using LaTeX for many years and *you cannot use
"\\" wrong*.  It breaks a line.  Period.  So, I through up my
hands.  "I have had enough of the LaTeX slide goop" I said (at least
until I can prove there is nothing better).  But, I think I have
found something that is better.  I won't know, of course, until I
use it for a while.  But, MagicPoint looks like my new friend.

MagicPoint takes a fairly straight-forward text-based slide format
and turns it into slides (either on-screen on your laptop or
postscript for printing or distributing).  Very cool, I thought.
The best part is that there is very little goop.  You have to know
something about the MGP input format, but that's it.  No style
files.  No black magic formating junk.  No "\\"!!!

But, there are a couple of things I didn't like right off the bat.
First, MGP does not include any way to do equations.  In fact, the
documentation says you should do them in LaTeX and make an EPS file
that can then be imported into MGP.  Ick!  Also, the familiar smaker
format was not available.  So, what's a guy to do?  Right...add some
goop.  (Yes, I am sure this is how LaTeX started, too.)  

So, I present to you, in this tarball, mmaker.  This is sort of like
smaker.  The syntax is not exactly the same.  I didn't try to mimic
smaker.  But, the spirit is the same.  That is, it will let you do
the common things *very easily* and for harder stuff you can always
drop back to raw MagicPoint input.  Plus, you can inline LaTeX for
the equations and tables that MGP is incapable of producing.  

So, I didn't succeed in completely getting away from LaTeX.  But, I
reduced the goop -- and sometimes incremental steps are just fine.
In addition, MGP is *made for making slides* which is one of LaTeX's
weakest points, in my opinion.

I hope this little script serves you well in your own fight with the
goop and let me know if you add anything cool or interesting.
