Written by Andrew
on August 2, 2023

Presentations with Markdown

Normally, I reach for LibreOffice or Google slides when I need to create a presentation. But when my slide deck include code or terminal commands, I often have to spend a bit of time formatting, and I find this frustrating.

I’ve been looking for an alternative - something that would allow me to just focus on the content, and do all of the formatting automatically. I also need the ability to export to PDF, PowerPoint and HTML.

Marp

I found a nice package called Marp, that turns a markdown file into nice looking presentation without too much fuss. Best of all, it has a great VSCode extension that allows you to preview your slides in real time.

VSCode extension

Search for marp in the extensions library in VSCode and install it

Once installed, create a markdown file for the presentation (ensure the file has the .md extension) and add your slide content in markdown format:

---
marp: true
theme: gaia
color: black
paginate: true
headingDivider:
 - 1
---

# Lorem ipsum
A short presentation about lorem ipsum

# What is Lorem ipsum
- In publishing and graphic design, Lorem ipsum is a placeholder text commonly used to demonstrate the visual form of a document or a typeface without relying on meaningful content. 
- Lorem ipsum may be used as a placeholder before final copy is available.

# Lorem Gnome App
![screenshot](lorem.png)

# Install via FlatHub
One click install from software library or via terminal
```cmd
flatpak install flathub org.gnome.design.Lorem

Here’s how it looks in VSCode:

To enable the live preview of the slides, click the preview button (top right)

and the live preview is displayed

What I like about this approach, is that I haven’t had to play around with code..

I simply add my content in markdown, and as long as I have the extension installed, and the front matter contains marp: true I can create my presentations.

Of course, you can customise the look and feel of the presentation with a theme, or write your own using CSS, but I don’t need that. I just need a way to quickly convert a text document into a presentation that looks good on a big screen.

Exporting

Review the extension preferences to set your output format - the default is PDF

I changed it to HTML and returned to the presentation markdown file.

Launch the command palette (Ctrl + SHift + P) and type marp export

You’ll be prompted on where you want to save your presentation and after a few seconds your presentation is ready to review in the browser.

Done!

Marp is just one of many markdown to presentation applications. For more control I recommend exploring pandoc, the universal document converter.

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