This document explains how to present and edit HTML slides.
Go to the web site for the book and locate the link for the slides. Download the slides and unzip them into a directory of your choice, such as c:\bigjava\slides\ch01
The web site has instructions for downloading and unzipping files if you need them.
Start your favorite browser. Crank up the font size to a larger font.
Select File -> Open from the menu and load a page such as c:\bigjava\slides\ch01\slide001.html .
The first slide shows up, magnified for easy viewing. Click the Next
and Previous buttons to flip through the slides.
You may want to customize the slides for your own lectures. Use any HTML editor of your choice.
Edit the master file for the chapter. It is named chnn.html , where nn is the chapter number. Start each slide with a <h2> tag.
Place images into an images subdirectory and code in a code subdirectory.
This process was inspired by the "classic" version of HTML Tidy which had an option to split an HTML file on h2 boundaries into files slide001.html, slide002.html, and so on. Unfortunately, the new version of HTML Tidy has dropped support for slides. You can use jtidy or my simple SlideMaker program.
To use SlideMaker, compile the source file, then run
java SlideMaker chnn.html
The SlideMaker program generates the same files as HTML Tidy (slide001.html, slide002.html, and so on).
Give them the slide master file the chapter. It is named chnn.html, where nn is the chapter number. You may want to post that file (together with the images and code directories) onto your web page.
Use the free program GNU Source Highlight . Run it as
source-highlight -s java -f html -n MyClass.java
Place the resulting file (MyClass.java.html) into the code subdirectory and link to it.
To use the same coloring scheme as in Big Java 2e/Java Concepts 4e, make a file tags.j2h with the following contents:
number #89c976 ;
string #00a99d ;
keyword #d05b76 ;
type #d05b76 ;
comment #7a9ecd ;
preproc black ;
symbol black ;
function black ;
cbracket black ;
linenum #006cb8 b;
Place the file in the directory from which you invoke source-highlight.
The following solution was devised by Laurie Hendren.
html2ps -F -u -W r -i .70 -s 1.4 -o temp.ps slide*.html
ps2pdf temp.ps
java -classpath Multivalent.jar tool.pdf.Impose -nup 4 temp.pdf
HTML Tidy no longer does slides, but it has a worthy successor—check out HTML Slidy! Rick Giles has done a beautiful job converting several chapters to this format. The next edition will use this format.
HTML is an international open standard. Powerpoint is a proprietary and undocumented file format.
There are many programs that can display and edit HTML, on multiple platforms. Powerpoint requires Microsoft Office on Windows or the Macintosh. Microsoft Office is fairly expensive, and some people dislike the fact that it is prone to virus attacks.
It is easy to integrate tools into an automated HTML production process, for example the code syntax highlighting and line numbering tool.
It is faster to create your own slides in HTML because you won't be tempted to use fancy effects :-)
HTML files are a fraction of the size of PowerPoint files.
The HTML format is likely to be stable over time. There is no assurance that future versions of Microsoft Office can read today's Powerpoint files. (The current version of Office has trouble reading files that are produced with much older versions.)
Finally, by showing HTML slides to your students, your students will get the message that computer scientists care about open standards.