showpdf

convert a "show" file to PDF via some pre-processing, then markdown, then beamer.

This is really a first cut push; I am woefully short of time and will do a better job as soon as I can get some quality time to spend with backslashes :-)

pre-requisites

• this source tree. Contains:

  • the main script "showpdf"
  • Markdown.pl, a single file perl script to convert markdown to HTML
  • mdbeamer.pl, to convert HTML to latex
  • md2pdf.show, which is the raw input for the "demo" show
  • md2pdf.pdf, which is the corresponding output (strictly speaking should not be checked in, but you may want to see what it looks like without installing and running it...)

• Markdown, from here

  • but this is really just one perl program so I've included it here

• the "texlive-latex" package

• the "graphviz" package

• mdbeamer.pl (included in this source tree)

• perl, including the HTML::Entities module

That should do it...

downsides

Latex is very very finicky. Debugging this, if it bombs, is a royal PITA. Right now, while this all works fine on Mandriva, it aborts with a "Runaway argument?" error on Fedora 13 and I have neither the time nor the brains to fix it :(