Sozi: An extension for inkscape to make presentations

martes, 6 de septiembre de 2011

Sozi is an inkscape extension (as JessyInk) that uses Javascript and SVG to make presentations to be viewed in a browser (works better with Firefox). Licensed with GPL 3.0. (that's cool!)

As the Sozi project website describes (http://sozi.baierouge.frinitial initial/wiki/en:welcome), a Sozi document is not organized as a slideshow (as it is in JessyInk or LibreOffice Impress), but as a poster, what gives you a diferent kind of freedom to manage the animations of your presentation. Playing such a presentation consists in a series of translations, zooms and rotations that allow to focus on the elements you want to show.
Requierements for Sozi:
  • Inkscape
  • PyGTK
  • A browser with Javascript and SVG support (on Firefox and Chromium works fine for me)
How to install

Although the instructions for installing Sozi is at their website, I'll explain how did I do this using the noob way :D.

1- Extract the zip in a folder and enter that folder
 (Tutorial in english, pictures in spanish... fail! >.<)

2- Open a terminal and run this command: $ su -c 'dolphin /usr/share/inkscape/extensions' -
("dolphin" is the KDE file browser, in gnome it is "nautillus". I have to advertise executing a graphical file browser is NOT a good practice, be carefull)

3- Now you have 2 file browsers: one with the Sozi files folder and the inkscape extensions folder. Now copy  from the Sozi files folder all files with extensions .inx, .py, .js and .css into the inkscape extensions folder

(the window at the left is the Sozi files folder and the other one is the inkscape extensions folder)


Now you can open inkscape, and you'll see in the Extensions menu the Sozi option.

How to use it:


As soon as there is already a tutorial in their website (http://sozi.baierouge.fr/wiki/en:tutorial) I'm just show some screenshots

1- The presentation is created
2- The frames on the presentation are defined by those rectangles surrounding each content (including the big one surrounding the whole presentation), those are common rectangles, so to become those rectangles into frames, select each rectangle and go to Extensions -> Sozi. Inkscape will disable and the Sozi window appears, that window is used to give the properties for that frame and the order of frames.


3- After defining the frames and finishing the presentation, save the file and open the svg file with your browser

I'll upload this presentation when I have the chance to do so

How does it work


When you make a rectangle become a frame, in the SVG structure (the XML), a group of <ns1:frame> tags is created and a javascript is nested to the SVG file, that's why a Sozi presentation (basically an SVG) becomes portable to any computer with the right browser (acording to Sozi, those SVGs works better in Firefox and Chrome/Chromium, Safari and Opera support is not completed, and support for Internet Explorer is not mentioned... strange, isn't it? :D)
Well, I like slideshows, but to have the power of how will the presentation be animated is really nice, if you are good using inkscape, you may love this inkscape extension!

Thanks for reading my post

Juan "HakS" Barba