I now very much dislike how OpenOffice.org Impress was built in Java.
- It's slow to load.
- It's unresponsive.
- It has an amazing ability to crash, on the most simple actions.
However, I do like the OpenDocument format. Also, presentations are to be presented, not just to be edited. And everyone presents with dual-monitor setups nowadays, and if not, they should.
So, I want presentation software which:
- is Free Open Source Software.
- works cross-platform.
- reads in .odp (OpenDocument Presentation) files
- displays a controlling window on one desktop, and a viewing window on a second desktop
- allows for non-linear viewing of slides (can switch to any slide at any time)
- (future) allows for editing / creation of slides on-the-fly
- (future) allows for a presentation to be made up of various presentation files, added and removed on-the-fly.
The first step would be to just write a viewer, and the second step would be to write a nice editor. Then I wouldn't have to deal with so many program crashes.
Incidently, this is not intended to replace OpenOffice.org completely. Impress has various features which I have not addressed here, the point of this program is to have something which even your mother could use to do a presentation safely.
In terms of implementation, it doesn't really matter, as long as it is responsive to users, and stable. If I get around to implementing it (after some of my current projects are out of a development stage), then I'd probably use Python, wxPython and odfpy.