Presentation Engines

Andrey Akinshin

My two primary presentation engines:

  • Slidev
    By Anthony Fu · 2020–2025
    Presentation slides for developers    Slidev     — My go-to tool, the most sophisticated solution I know
  • Google Slides
    By Google    Google Slides     — For simple and quick presentations

Previously Used Presentation Engines

The history of presentation engines I used:

  • Power Point
    My first tool, it’s was OK for simple presentations, but it quickly turned out to be too limited:

    • Challenging to achieve consistent formatting
    • Issues with LaTeX and code formatting
    • Dependency on Microsoft stack

    Eventually, for simple use-cases, I switched to Google Slides
    By Google    Google Slides    , while I was looking for a more sophisticated solution for professional complex presentations.

  • beamer
    By Till Tantau, Vedran Mileti'c, Louis Stuart, Joseph Wright, Sam Carter
    A LaTeX class for producing presentations and slides    beamer
    Native LaTeX solution, which was great at the time for mathematical presentations. However, there were some issues:

    • It’s a big lie that LaTeX is about creating docs where always look the same.
      • Different LaTeX distributions produce different results
      • Especially, when I switch between Windows/Linux/macOS, I always get different outputs. It’s almost impossible to achieve consistent formatting even on the same version of TeX Live.
      • When a new version of LaTeX engine is released, I have to to adjust the code to achieve consistent formatting.
    • Too many challenges with fonts, colors, and typesetting.
    • LaTeX is great for equations, but not so great for text and layouts.

  • remark
    A simple, in-browser, markdown-driven slideshow tool    remark

  • reveal.js
    HTML presentation framework    reveal.js

  • My private presentation engine

Other Interesting Projects

See also: markdown-for-slide-decks.md