Use a reusable slide layout

A reusable layout is a slide arrangement someone has made for a particular purpose: a comparison, a timeline, or a team introduction.

You do not have to create a layout to use one. Someone, or an AI assistant, makes it once, and other people fill it with their own words. Your assistant sees every layout in the folder when it writes slides, so you can ask for one by name: “use the comparison layout for the before and after slide”.

Keep the layout with the talk#

If someone gives you a presentation folder with an extensions folder inside, keep that folder beside the slide file. mdeck finds those layouts automatically.

Example

my-talk/
  my-talk.md
  extensions/
    comparison/
      …files supplied by the layout's creator

Copy the whole layout folder if you move it to a different presentation. You do not need to edit mdeck itself. The same folder can also hold a theme or a set of colors made for your team; mdeck list my-talk.md lists everything it found.

See which layouts are available#

In your terminal

mdeck list layouts my-talk.md

The list includes the usual layouts and any extra ones saved beside your talk.

Start from an example#

Ask mdeck to show the starting text for a layout:

In your terminal

mdeck starter split my-talk.md

Copy the text it prints into your slide file. Put --- on its own line before it if you are adding it after an existing slide.

Replace the example words, leaving the named areas and settings in place. If you use mdeck new to make a file beside an existing extensions folder, its wizard also offers those layouts.

Understand the comparison example#

The example shipped with this project contains two slides. The first uses an extra layout called comparison. The second uses the usual split layout with a list that appears one point at a time.

Open it from the project folder:

In your terminal

mdeck run examples/custom-layouts/slides.md

The comparison slide has settings like these:

Example

layout: comparison
props:
  ratio: [2, 3]
  emphasis: right

props groups this layout's options. The ratio gives a little more room to the right side. Changing emphasis to left moves the highlighted border to the left side. Use none for no highlighted side.

The :::slot left and :::slot right blocks hold the words for the two sides. “Slot” simply means a named area that the layout knows how to arrange.

Check your changes#

In your terminal

mdeck check my-talk.md

If a layout requires a particular area or setting, mdeck tells you when it is missing. The creator of each layout chooses its available settings, so one layout's options may not work in another.

Want a new layout? Describe it to your assistant. The advanced layout guide explains the code it writes.