Impress (OpenOffice.org) vs S5

I mentioned that S5 was dead (since it hasn't really been updated since 2005, perhaps this is because it is already mature). Then I see an ajaxian link to someone who hacked CSS transitions onto s5 for the iphone. So it's not completely dead (it's being used in bleeding edge stuff). But last time I checked on the forks listed in the wikipedia entry for S5, they were small patches on top of s5 and then they stopped development on the fork. Now you have more problems. Do I use a fork? Which one? So perhaps the dead body that is S5 is still kicking. As always, if S5 ain't broke for you, don't fix it. For me I don't see a compelling reason now to favor S5 over Impress.

Here's a simple list of pros/cons of s5 and impress

• Wow factor. Cool! It's in a broswer
• Has rst converter (that ships with docutils). But I recommend this pygments enhanced version by matt good
• open source

• Run's in a browswer. (Or some browsers). Doesn't like konqueror and I've had firefox extensions cause issues with it.
• Font resizing
• Limited feature set. No presenter view. Tweaking formatting requires css modifications.

• Open source. Though Sun might not be the most community friendly company, they did open the source for it
• Open standard. This one is big. Having said that, finding the docs for the standard aren't super useful. (They explain the XML schema). But the format is open and relatively easier to grok. Don't know that you can say the same thing about Keynote or pre-xmlized PowerPoint versions.
• (Theoretical at this point). Because it is an open standard, I should be able to run my preso in Koffice or IBM's Symphony or ... (Likely that I'll run into issues much like how S5 doesn't run on Konqueror....)
• GUI. For folks who are used to powerpoint, it's handy.
• Dual monitor support. I haven't played with OOo 3.0 but it's supposed to have this functionality
• Runs on Windows/Mac/Linux
• Groks powerpoint
• Export to powerpoint/html/swf/....
• Has rst support!

• Bloated. Perhaps, but a non issue for most modern (post 2000) machinery.
• Not keynote. I haven't used keynote, but I guess it's the bee's knees. Al Gore made good use of it I guess
• Lack of (nice/good/pre-installed) templates.
• Templating documentation sucks! How do I create a template? How do I apply a template? What is up with the template guis? They are completely counterintuitive (or my brain it). (Ask me how I know this)

To summarize, I feel like I can move forward with Impress the format that Impress supports (now that rst support is there). I love open standards and the reference implementation for ODT (OOo) suits me for now if I need to tweak slides. Impress is somewhat quirky, and the distinction between Slide Masters and Templates is confusing. The interface needs a lot of love, but the standard supports what appears to be well beyond the realm of what I currently need from a presentation format. I'll keep my fingers crossed that one day KOffice will be as to OOo as Firefox is to IE. (Apple when are you going to get on the bandwagon and support it? You could hijack the KOffice code and do your make a pretty gui thing for it. Much like you did with Safari..... You don't have to tell anyone anything about OOo if you don't want to.)

tags: impress  s5  docutils  pygments  

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