tpp: Pulling it all together

After mentioning textdraw the other day, I listed a few other artistic applications that might intrigue you.

But between toilet (and figlet), cadubi, and img2txt, the only thing that’s missing is something to pull it all together.

tpp is an analogue for PowerPoint at the console, translating marked-up text files into frame-by-frame presentations. All that with no more requirements than a screen to look at.

And a keyboard I suppose, since you’ll need something to control the presentation. And since tpp is written in ruby, you’ll want something that can handle that without too much stress; I’ve had machines in the past that suffered a little under ruby.

But in all truth, even the process of putting together a tpp presentation is child’s play. Take a look at the examples in the documentation, and tell me that the markup is difficult. I dare you. 😉

As you can see above, tpp works straightaway with figlet. It also has color, can manage some simple transitions (which means you can do some fundamental animation) and can even send commands to the underlying shell and redirect the output into the presentation. That’s rather impressive.

So what that means is, we have one tool capable of drawing and editing lines and shapes, two that can handle banner text output (one with color), another that can render color images into text versions, another that can draw in color in stamp-pad style, and now tpp, which can convert text into simple presentations, complete with color and basic animation.

What are you waiting for? The audience is listening. 😉