MagicPoint is one of several

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

presentation program A computing, a presentation program (also called presentation software) is a software package used to display information in the form of a slide show. It has three major functions: * an editor that allows text to be inserted and formatted * a ...

s,Using Linux for Presentations Mini-HOWTO
/ref> often used to produce slides for conferences. Unlike most presentation programs, such as

Microsoft PowerPoint Microsoft PowerPoint is a presentation program, created by Robert Gaskins and Dennis Austin at a software company named Forethought, Inc. It was released on April 20, 1987, initially for Macintosh computers only. Microsoft acquired PowerPoi ...

, where a

GUI The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, inste ...

is used to create slides, MagicPoint slides are created by writing text files using a simple

markup language Markup language refers to a text-encoding system consisting of a set of symbols inserted in a text document to control its structure, formatting, or the relationship between its parts. Markup is often used to control the display of the document ...

. The resulting file is then displayed with MagicPoint's

X11 The X Window System (X11, or simply X) is a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems. X provides the basic framework for a GUI environment: drawing and moving windows on the display device and interacting wit ...

-based viewer.

History

MagicPoint was originally created in the autumn of 1997, at
WIDE Project
camp. It was originally known as tp, standing for TinyPoint, but in December the name was changed to MagicPoint.

Features

* Content is written in text files and formatting is indicated by text features. For example, different level

bullet point In typography, a bullet or bullet point, , is a typographical symbol or glyph used to introduce items in a list. For example: *Point 1 *Point 2 *Point 3 The bullet symbol may take any of a variety of shapes, such as circular, square, diam ...

s can be created by simply indenting the text with tabs * Many image formats are supportedDavid MacKay: Useful stuff: Magicpoint
/ref> * Slides can be scaled to different screen sizes * External applications can be executed from inside the presentation * A talk timer and slide guide are included * Presentations can be exported to

HTML The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaScri ...

PostScript PostScript (PS) is a page description language in the electronic publishing and desktop publishing realm. It is a dynamically typed, concatenative programming language. It was created at Adobe Systems by John Warnock, Charles Geschke, Doug Br ...

files.(Linux) Event HOWTO
/ref> Another feature of MagicPoint is the ability to draw on slides during a presentation. By pressing x on the keyboard, the slide can temporarily be scribbled on with red "ink". Shift x allows you to cycle through other pen colours.

References

External links

Official homepage

Short review and tutorial

Primer
an
Syntax
{{Presentation software Free presentation software