Controls¶

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Next slide: space, enter, l, →

•

Previous slide: backspace, h, ←

•

Go forward 10 slides: j, ↓

•

Go backward 10 slides: k, ↑

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First slide: 0

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Last slide: G

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Reload file: r

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Quit: q

The r key is very useful since it allows you to preview your slides while you are writing them. You can also use this to fix artifacts when the terminal is resized.

Input format¶

The input format can be anything that Pandoc supports. Plain markdown is usually the most simple solution:

---
title: This is my presentation
author: Jane Doe
...
# This is a slide
Slide contents.  Yay.
---
# Important title
Things I like:
- Markdown
- Haskell
- Pandoc

Horizontal rulers (---) are used to split slides.

However, if you prefer not use these since they are a bit intrusive in the markdown, you can also start every slide with a header. In that case, the file should not contain a single horizontal ruler.

patat will pick the most deeply nested header (e.g. h2) as the marker for a new slide. Headers above the most deeply nested header (e.g. h1) will turn into title slides, which are displayed as as a slide containing only the centered title.

This means the following document is equivalent to the one we saw before:

---
title: This is my presentation
author: Jane Doe
...
# This is a slide
Slide contents.  Yay.
# Important title
Things I like:
- Markdown
- Haskell
- Pandoc

And that following document contains three slides: a title slide, followed by two content slides.

---
title: This is my presentation
author: Jane Doe
...
# Chapter 1
## This is a slide
Slide contents.  Yay.
## Another slide
Things I like:
- Markdown
- Haskell
- Pandoc

For more information, see Advanced slide splitting.

Configuration¶

patat is fairly configurable. The configuration is done using YAML. There are two places where you can put your configuration:

1.

In the presentation file itself, using the Pandoc metadata header.

2.

In $HOME/.patat.yaml

For example, we set an option key to val by using the following file:

---
title: Presentation with options
author: John Doe
patat:
    key: val
...
Hello world.

Or we can use a normal presentation and have the following $HOME/.patat.yaml:

key: val

Line wrapping¶

Line wrapping can be enabled by setting wrap: true in the configuration. This will re-wrap all lines to fit the terminal width better.

Auto advancing¶

By setting autoAdvanceDelay to a number of seconds, patat will automatically advance to the next slide.

---
title: Auto-advance, yes please
author: John Doe
patat:
    autoAdvanceDelay: 2
...
Hello World!
---
This slide will be shown two seconds after the presentation starts.

Note that changes to autoAdvanceDelay are not picked up automatically if you are running patat --watch. This requires restarting patat.

Advanced slide splitting¶

You can control the way slide splitting works by setting the slideLevel variable. This variable defaults to the least header that occurs before a non-header, but it can also be explicitly defined. For example, in the following document, the slideLevel defaults to 2:

# This is a slide
## This is a nested header
This is some content

With slideLevel 2, the h1 will turn into a "title slide", and the h2 will be displayed at the top of the second slide. We can customize this by setting slideLevel manually:

---
patat:
  slideLevel: 1
...
# This is a slide
## This is a nested header
This is some content

Now, we will only see one slide, which contains a nested header.

Fragmented slides¶

By default, slides are always displayed "all at once". If you want to display them fragment by fragment, there are two ways to do that. The most common case is that lists should be displayed incrementally.

This can be configured by settings incrementalLists to true in the metadata block:

---
title: Presentation with incremental lists
author: John Doe
patat:
    incrementalLists: true
...
- This list
- is displayed
- item by item

Setting incrementalLists works on all lists in the presentation. To flip the setting for a specific list, wrap it in a block quote. This will make the list incremental if incrementalLists is not set, and it will display the list all at once if incrementalLists is set to true.

This example contains a sublist which is also displayed incrementally, and then a sublist which is displayed all at once (by merit of the block quote).

---
title: Presentation with incremental lists
author: John Doe
patat:
    incrementalLists: true
...
- This list
- is displayed
    * item
    * by item
- Or sometimes
    > * all at
    > * once

Another way to break up slides is to use a pagraph only containing three dots separated by spaces. For example, this slide has two pauses:

Legen
. . .
wait for it
. . .
Dary!

Theming¶

Colors and other properties can also be changed using this configuration. For example, we can have:

---
author: 'Jasper Van der Jeugt'
title: 'This is a test'
patat:
    wrap: true
    theme:
        emph: [vividBlue, onVividBlack, bold]
        imageTarget: [onDullWhite, vividRed]
...
# This is a presentation
This is _emph_ text.
![Hello](foo.png)

The properties that can be given a list of styles are:

blockQuote, borders, bulletList, codeBlock, code, definitionList, definitionTerm, emph, header, imageTarget, imageText, linkTarget, linkText, math, orderedList, quoted, strikeout, strong, tableHeader, tableSeparator

The accepted styles are:

bold, dullBlack, dullBlue, dullCyan, dullGreen, dullMagenta, dullRed, dullWhite, dullYellow, onDullBlack, onDullBlue, onDullCyan, onDullGreen, onDullMagenta, onDullRed, onDullWhite, onDullYellow, onVividBlack, onVividBlue, onVividCyan, onVividGreen, onVividMagenta, onVividRed, onVividWhite, onVividYellow, underline, vividBlack, vividBlue, vividCyan, vividGreen, vividMagenta, vividRed, vividWhite, vividYellow

Syntax Highlighting¶

As part of theming, syntax highlighting is also configurable. This can be configured like this:

---
patat:
  theme:
    syntaxHighlighting:
      decVal: [bold, onDullRed]
...
...

decVal refers to "decimal values". This is known as a "token type". For a full list of token types, see this list -- the names are derived from there in an obvious way.