NAME¶

s5 — set up and update S5 presentations

SYNOPSIS¶

DESCRIPTION¶

The s5 tool eases the creation of presentation slides using the “Simple Standards-based Slide Show System”. It may be used to create a working copy of a template directory or, later, to update the working copy after the template has changed over time.

The s5 tool supports the following command-line options:

-d

Specify the top-level directory containing the available templates.

-h

Display a short help text and exit.

-N

No-operation mode; just display the commands without executing them.

-t template

Specify the template within the directory given by the -d option.

-T full

Specify the full path to the template directory instead of the default /usr/share/s5/s5-blank

-v

Verbose operation; display diagnostic information.

The s5 tool supports the following actions:

blank path

Aliases: create, new

Copy the template directory into the directory specified by path, creating it if necessary.

cksum path

Aliases: check, verify

Verify the checksums recorded for the S5 presentation files in the directory specified by path. The s5 utility reports both files that have been modified (fail the checksum check) and files that no longer exist yet have checksums recorded.

help

Alias: usage

Display a short help message and exit.

mksum path

Record the template checksums into a file in a directory specified by path. Users should never really have to execute this by hand, since it is done internally as part of the blank and update command processing.

update path

Update the S5 presentation files in the directory specified by path with the new versions in the S5 template directory.

Before updating, the s5 utility verifies the checksums of the files in the path directory, and terminates if a mismatch is found. After that, s5 checks for any files that exist in both the new template and in the path directory, but are not recorded in the checksum file (i.e. have been placed in path by hand after the last s5 blank or s5 update run) and terminates if any such files differ.

If all these checks are successful, the s5 utility copies the template files over those in path, overwriting any existing files and retaining any files that do not exist in the template directory.

THE CONFIGURATION FILE¶

The s5 utility's operation may be customized by specifying some common parameters in a configuration file that is read at each invocation. There are two configuration files - the global /etc/s5.conf and a per-user .s5.conf in the user's home directory. The global file is read first; the per-user file may override any of its settings.

The configuration file has simple shell-like syntax; its purpose is merely to optionally set some variables. Lines starting with the “#” character are ignored as comments. The variables that affect the operation of s5 are:

S5_DIR

The top-level directory containing all the templates; overridden by the command-line -d option. Default: /usr/share/s5

S5_TEMPLATE

The name of the template to use, a subdirectory within S5_DIR; overridden by the command-line -t option. Default: s5-blank

THE CHECKSUMS FILE¶

The s5 utility stores the checksums of blank S5 presentations into a file named s5-checksums.txt into the presentation directory. This is a simple text file with lines containing of a keyword and values. The keywords that the s5 utility currently generates and parses are as follows:

CKSUM_CMD checksum-program

The name of the checksum program to use; the default is cksum(1).

CKSUM_ARGS [[argument...]]

The arguments (if any) passed to the checksum program as defined by the CKSUM_CMD line. The default is an empty string, no arguments passed.

FILE filename

The name of the file that the following CKSUM line refers to.

CKSUM checksum-line-text

The output of the checksum command as specified by CKSUM_CMD and CKSUM_ARGS conflated into a single line.

EXAMPLES¶

Start a brand new presentation:

Verify if any of the S5 files in the presentation have been modified:

Do the same, but display verbose information about the lines read from the checksums file and the files verified:

Update the S5 presentation files after installing a new system-wide version of the S5 template:

Store the checksums of the S5 template files (not the real files in the presentation directory!) into the s5-checksums.txt file in the gnupg/ directory; this is actually redundant, as it is done as part of the s5 blank invocation:

SEE ALSO¶

The home page of the Simple Standards-based Slide Show System: https://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/s5/

HISTORY¶

The Simple Standards-based Slide Show System was written by Eric Meyer based on earlier work by Tantek Çelik. The s5 tool and this manual page were written by Peter Pentchev in 2008.

AUTHORS¶

Eric Meyer ⟨s5@meyerweb.com⟩
Tantek Çelik ⟨tantek@tantek.com⟩
Peter Pentchev ⟨roam@ringlet.net⟩