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A slide is a frame

Most slides in a lecture are a column of text, and that is right. The ones that are not – the title slide, the divider that opens a part, a row of cards, a photograph the words stand on – are what this page is about.

Nothing here is drawn. A composition takes one word in the frontmatter – the settings block at the top of the file – or one ::: line in the body. There is no canvas, no second file to keep in step, and no box to drag – so a slide that was rewritten the night before still lays out.

A lecture that ignores this page builds exactly as it did before – the same four files, byte for byte. And a construction comes off again: delete the line that asked for one and the slide is back the way it was before you wrote it. The words stay where they are; the construction goes around them, one slide at a time.

These are newer than the format promise. Both ways of getting psi-slides build them – the app and the sources alike – but they came after 1.0.0 froze the source format, so a lecture naming a cover:, a ::: dock or any of the rest may need an edit when they reach a release of their own. Getting started says what that covers and what it does not.

Ten ways to open a lecture

A lecture can open on a title in the corner, on a wall of colour, or on a photograph with the words standing over it. You name the one you want in the frontmatter, with cover:. The ten below run quiet to loud rather than alphabetically, because loud or quiet is the question you answer when you pick one.

Three of them, in that order. classic is the default, and a lecture that does not name one gets it.

A title slide with the type set in the lower left third of an otherwise empty slide.
classic the type in the lower left third
A title slide with white type on a full field of deep blue.
panel pale type on a full field of the accent colour
A title slide where a picture fills the frame and the type is reversed out of a dark gradient over it.
hero a picture fills the slide, the type over a dark gradient
The other seven, and the two settings that move the type

Four of the ten take a picture: split and hero from cover-image:, beside and above from whatever the title slide itself carries, so a figure written in the lecture can be the cover picture. Two more settings move the type rather than replacing the composition – with cover-align: you set it high, in the middle or low on the seven that leave it any freedom, and with cover-ratio: you say how much of the slide the picture gets on the ones that divide it.

A title slide with the title at the top edge, a lede in the middle, and the credits under a rule at the bottom.
masthead the title at the top edge, credits under a rule at the foot
A title slide with the whole type block centred on both axes.
stack centred on both axes, for an opening that wants to be still
A title slide with the title set very large, filling the upper half of the slide.
display the title large enough to fill the slide
A title slide that opens on a sentence set large, with the lecture title small underneath it.
quote the talk opens on a claim; the title reads as the attribution
A title slide with the type on the left and a picture running off the right edge.
split the type on the left, a picture running off the right edge
A title slide with the title on the left and a three-box diagram inset on the right.
beside the slide’s own content beside the title, so a drawing can be the cover picture
A title slide with a three-box diagram across the top and the title centred in the band below it.
above the same content on top, the title centred below
The same centred title slide with the type block moved down to the foot of the frame.
cover-align: bottom the same stack, with the type at the foot

The last slide is the cover’s bookend. A slide written as ## closing: is drawn in whatever composition you named with cover:, so the hour ends on the shape it began with. It carries your own words and neither the presenter line nor the date: those say who is talking and when, and the room learned that an hour ago.

The six compositions with no picture can still have one. A backdrop goes behind any slide, the title slide included, and it wins over whatever the composition would have drawn there. On panel the two make something neither has alone: the field of accent becomes the veil, and the photograph reads through a plate of colour.

The slide that opens a part

You start a new part with a # heading in the source, and the lecture puts a divider in front of it so the room arrives at the heading before the first slide of the part. You name one of six compositions with section:, and they stay quieter than the cover: a divider that can be mistaken for it has failed at its one job.

A divider slide showing only the part heading on an empty slide.
plain the heading alone. The default
A divider slide where the whole slide takes a light tint of the theme accent.
tinted the accent at 12%. From the back of a room the colour arrives before any word
A divider slide listing all three parts of the lecture with the second one set large and live.
outline the running agenda: which part, out of how many, and how far in
A divider slide with the heading between two rules across the width of the text.
rule the quietest, and one that survives a black-and-white print
A divider slide with the heading sitting on a tinted panel.
card the heading on a tinted panel
A divider slide with a large accent numeral two above the part heading.
number a large numeral above the heading, counting the parts

A divider can carry its own slide. Whatever you write between the # heading and the first slide under it is on that slide, and it used to be dropped without a word. A quotation, a photograph, a figure or a row of three names: the part opens on it, and it needs no directive of its own.

The running agenda is also a slide you can write. Write ## outline: where you want it and you get the same list as the outline divider – usually straight after the cover, where there is no part boundary for a divider to be generated at. Before the first part nothing in it is marked as current, because a plan nobody has started is read at full strength.

Boxes, not columns

Three boxes side by side are containers, not columns: what you write in one stays in it. Cards for three things, then, and ::: cols for the one long argument a browser may break wherever it likes.

Two arrangements of one vocabulary, and you pick which with the word after the colons. The settings are the same either way: the size, the alignment, and what the box is made of.

audience.html · ::: cards 3
A projected slide with a paragraph and, below it, three boxes in a row, each outlined with a hairline and opening with a bold word.
One size for the whole row, taken from the longest item. Three sizes in one row read as a mistake rather than as a hierarchy.
audience.html · ::: rows
A projected slide with three stacked rows, each a short term in a tinted box on the left and its explanation set beside it.
One term column for the whole stack, because the stack is one grid rather than one grid per row. The explanations line up however long the terms are.

One row can serve the slide and the hand-out. What you write under a card at a second level is off the projection and in the printed document, so the room gets the headline and the reader gets the detail. Press C and the levels come back onto the wall when a question needs them, without writing it twice.

What a card sits on takes one word. A tinted fill, a hairline outline, the accent colour with pale type on it, the page colour, no box at all, or a picture as the card’s own ground. Never a fill and a hairline together: a grey box inside a grey border reads as a form field rather than as a card.

A picture behind the whole slide

audience.html · ::: backdrop
A projection filled edge to edge by a photograph of a city at dusk, with a small dark card of two lines standing in the lower left.

Write ::: backdrop and an image stands behind everything, edge to edge, on any slide. One line, and the text column stays where it is.

A veil in the theme’s own background colour goes over it by default, so ordinary text stays legible over the picture in any of the seven themes.

Write reveal after it and each press of Space changes how much of the picture shows: a band along one edge, the whole slide, or none of it. What moves is the opening, not the photograph – so it opens over the slide rather than sliding about behind it.

Over the slide, or part of the frame

An overlay lies over the slide and takes nothing from it. A dock is part of the frame, and the text column yields to it. That is the whole difference; the settings you write are the same for both.

Both take an edge, a ground and a width, and both can be held back until a later press of Space.

audience.html · ::: overlay
A projection of a photograph with a frosted column down its left edge, the height of the frame, carrying a heading and two paragraphs.
An overlay grown to the frame. A card in a corner is the usual case; .panel makes it a column the full height, a band the full width, or the whole frame. The picture underneath is untouched.
audience.html · ::: dock
A projected text slide with a standing list of six part names down a tinted column on the left, the current one in black and the rest greyed.
A dock, and the text beside it. The slide reserves the column and the prose is set in what is left, so nothing is covered and you do not have to keep space clear by hand.

One dock can belong to a whole part. Written under a # heading with .every, it is on every slide of that part, and a slide that writes its own replaces it for that slide only. That is how the standing list in the picture gets there: once, not twenty-eight times.

A link in a dock is a live marker. Each item points at one slide by name, and the item for the slide the room is on lights up while the rest step back. An item naming nothing fails the build rather than sitting there dead, which is what a hand-kept list does on the third rewrite.

Where to read further

  • The decoration lecture Every construction on this page, on the slide that describes it, in a lecture you can walk through. Its printed document is the same source as the hand-out.
  • What psi-slides is The front page: one lecture as the room sees it and as the reader gets it, and why those are the same file.
  • In the room The hour from behind the laptop: the cockpit, the beats, and what you press when a room goes quiet.
  • Figures you write The case for the figure language, and the manual beside it, which builds one a line at a time and lists every statement.