powerpoint in bash

ppt.sh

#!/bin/bash

usage() {
	echo "Interactively show slides from a file"
	echo
	echo "Usage:"
	echo "$0 FILE LINES"
	echo
	echo "FILE is the file containing the slides."
	echo "In the file, each slide is indicated with a simple 'slide' by itself"
	echo "at the start of a line."
	echo "LINES is the desired height; \$LINES is generally what you want to"
	echo "provide here."
	echo
	echo "Control:"
	echo "Pressing k or h will move backwards one slide."
	echo "Pressing anything else will move ahead one slide."
}

if [ $# -lt 2 ]; then
	usage
	exit 1
fi

UNPARSED="$(cat $1)"
REMOVE_LINES=$(echo "$UNPARSED" | sed '/^slide$/q' | wc -l)
if [ "$REMOVE_LINES" -eq 0 ]; then
	echo "All slides including the first slide must start with 'slide' on a line by itself."
fi
UNPARSED="$(echo "$UNPARSED" | sed -n $((1 + $REMOVE_LINES)),\$p)"

I=0
while [ -n "$UNPARSED" ]; do
	I=$((I + 1))
	SLIDE[$I]="$(echo "$UNPARSED" | sed '/^slide$/q' | sed \$d; echo x)"
	# bash gotcha: command expansion removes trailing newlines
	# we need them here for counting purposes
	# so throw an "x" on the end and take it off after expansion's done
	SLIDE[$I]="${SLIDE[$I]%x}"
	REMOVE_LINES=$(echo "${SLIDE[$I]}" | wc -l)
	UNPARSED="$(echo "$UNPARSED" | sed 1,$(($REMOVE_LINES))d)"
done

echo "Loaded ${#SLIDE[@]} slides"

SLIDE_IX=0
while read -s -N 1; do
	case "$REPLY" in
		[hk])
			GO=-1
			;;
		*)
			GO=1
			;;
	esac
	SLIDE_IX="$(($SLIDE_IX + $GO))"
	if [ "$SLIDE_IX" -gt "${#SLIDE[@]}" ]; then
		SLIDE_IX="${#SLIDE[@]}"
	elif [ "$SLIDE_IX" -lt 1 ]; then
		SLIDE_IX=1
	fi
	echo
	echo -n "${SLIDE[$SLIDE_IX]}"
	SLIDE_HEIGHT="$(echo "${SLIDE[$SLIDE_IX]}" | wc -l)"
	I="$SLIDE_HEIGHT"
	while [ "$I" -lt $2 ]; do
		echo
		I="$(($I + 1))"
	done
done

A simple slide viewer in bash. Just wanted to do something cool for a presentation on CLI tools.

super cool.

This is a good idea. I did something similar recently, the implementation is different but the general idea is the same.

https://github.com/ryanuber/slide.sh

@ryanuber Wow your version is shorter, cleaner and far more capable. I'm definitely using yours in the future!

Hi @rhowardiv, you're probably not interested in supporting a script you wrote 8 years ago, but it perfectly fits my needs for a project and I am trying to get it working on mac. The error I get is ./ppt.sh: line 47: read: -N: invalid option – Any ideas?

Thanks so much

To clarify, having slides be lines of a single text file is very attractive to me and other solutions have not had that feature

@azriel I'd love to help! This is what i see in man bash on linux
for read -N:

-N nchars
        read returns after reading exactly nchars characters rather than waiting for a complete line of input, unless EOF is encountered or read times out.  Delimiter characters encountered in the input are not treated specially and do not cause read  to  return
        until nchars characters are read.

If your version of bash is missing -N, maybe it has -n which seems more common in the wild and looks like it should also work fine?

@rhowardiv Thanks! Looks like that works great. I'm going to play around with it and I'll let you know if I have any more questions. Thanks for the help!