Need a flexible method to organize slideshows

[Dylan McCall]

At present, slideshows are sorted completely randomly. As a result, every slide has to be self-contained because it cannot be trusted that previous slides have been displayed.

One quick solution, being implemented shortly, is expecting slideshow creators to manually specify the exact order of a slideshow. This technique works, but is very high maintenance. When a new slide is added it needs to be given a precise place or it will not appear. With its simplest implementation, that also defeats the possibility of random slides, which could be a powerful idea and seems necessary with the fact that an installation could easily take less time than the slideshow itself.

[Dylan McCall (dylanmccall)]

I am currently working on a system that works with slide dependencies, using some simple regex stuff so that slides can depend on numerous other slides. The idea there is that a slide is not displayed until certain others are. In addition to dependencies, the system joins slides into groups so that they are all shown in a certain order, one after the other.

The system expects a slides_data directory for a slideshow. This directory contains files prefaced with a bit of regex, ending in ".data". For example, "*.data" will be read for all slides, while "option-*.data" will be read for all slides beginning with "option-", and "thanks.data" will be read for that one slide.
The files themselves are in good old XML format, defining options for the slide(s) for which they have been opened. In there can be set the mentioned dependencies and joins, again using regex for listed slide names.

With a nice sorting algorithm, this could turn out fairly well. Attached is an example slides_data directory I have created...