I'm trying out using revealjs Quarto slides for my class presentations. I like being able to annotate slides, and the chalkboard and notes canvas options seemed like a great way to do that. Today was my first time attempting it, with the slides open in my web browser on my iPad and annotating with my Apple Pencil.
I'm wondering if anyone else uses this workflow, and if so, would be willing to share tips.
For example, is there a way to make the slides/browser/notes canvas can be set to only detect my Apple Pencil in annotation mode? Right now, my palm resting on the iPad is making a lot of marks. Apps like Goodnotes have built-in support for Apple Pencils, or if you're using a different type of stylus you can turn on 'palm rejection' to avoid this. This is perhaps a feature that would come from the web browser rather than revealjs.
Also, on an iPad in a web browser I don't know of an easy way to get a virtual keyboard to pop up. I know I could bring along a Bluetooth keyboard to be able to do things like clear drawings, but I'd love to be able to do that without bringing another object with me to class. Again, this might be more of an iPad question (how to bring up a keyboard outside of a text box) rather than a revealjs question.
I've been using slides like this in Rmd, and then Quarto, for a few years now (earliest I can find is 2018), also with an iPad. My final conclusion each year is that rendering them, and then printing to PDF, is the superior experience for annotation. Unfortunately.
This approach lets me use a full fledged annotation app on the iPad, and ensures that students can access an offline copy. Not ideal, because it does lose the interactivity option, but what I keep begrudgingly accepting each fall.
Very interested in anyone else who has gotten the web browser route to fully work!
Do you render to revealjs and then print to PDF, or render directly to PDF? I have been knitting RMarkdowns to PDF slides for as long as you, and using Goodnotes to annotate them in class. But, it seems like Posit isn't spending much time on supporting rendering to PDF slides from Quarto, and RMarkdown support is maybe winding down. I looked to see if I had anything in my post history to support this but apparently it has all been private conversations with Posit employees.
Maybe this is a feature request for Posit. There are tons of professors who use their products, so either we need the render to PDF slide functionality fully supported, or if it will not be, better support for annotation on the outputs they do support.
I render to HTML/RevealJS, then have a particular sequence of actions that lead to a good PDF on my setup.
It's a much superior render than straight to PDF which pipes through beamer last I checked. I get to keep all my careful CSS formatting and fonts and so on.
It's not a great workflow - I've found that using anything scripted ends up running into one of the various issues with print.
For example, if you render -> present in external web -> print, on my Chrome, it looks ugly as sin. It loses the slide sizing and formatting.
My current "this works ok" from Posit Workbench is to Render -> Print (this brings up a new tab) -> CTRL+P to bring up Chrome's print dialogue -> bypass Chrome, and print using system dialogue -> save as PDF. This avoids issues with Chrome's printing, and with the slide sizing, and seems to get close-to-visual-truth for the printed PDF vs. the RevealJS formatting. The Render -> Print stage in Posit Workbench brings up a continuous scrolling variant of the slides, which upon being printed recognizes the size and works ok.
I'd love to auto-render to PDF in a way that's good and keeps all my formatting, but I haven't found anything that's 100% (especially for footnotes and references and things - the CSS for those seems to 'fragile' somehow and breaks at the drop of a hat). And I always tweak slides slightly before each class, checking for typos and stuff, so I just print each one as I need it.
Thanks for sharing! I'm using the RStudio desktop application, and had never noticed the print button before. For anyone else who finds this thread (or, let's be honest, future me),
Would you mind sharing a little about your setup to make good PDFs from revealjs slides? Someone on mastodon just mentioned decktape as a part of a workflow 