Suvarna Garge (Editor)

MagicPoint

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Developer(s)
  
WIDE Project

Type
  
Presentation program

Operating system
  
Any Unix-like

License
  
BSD license

Stable release
  
1.13a / February 13, 2008; 9 years ago (2008-02-13)

Website
  
http://member.wide.ad.jp/wg/mgp/

MagicPoint is one of several open source presentation programs, often used to produce slides for conferences. Unlike most presentation programs, such as Microsoft PowerPoint, where a GUI is used to create slides, MagicPoint slides are created by writing text files using a simple markup language. The resulting file is then displayed with MagicPoint's X11-based viewer.

Contents

History

MagicPoint was originally created in the autumn of 1997, at a 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 points can be created by simply indenting the text with tabs
  • Many image formats are supported
  • 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 or PostScript files. Native MagicPoint files can be imported by Calligra Stage, another open source presentation program.

    • 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

    MagicPoint Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA