I was racking my brain trying to remember the name of MagicPoint, an X11-based presentation tool, I found on freshmeat Pylize in python and PLies, the perl presentation tool that informed the design of Pylize. PLies uses XHTML apparently, and both let you use space bar to go through a presentation.

Personally I like the idea of HTML::Template but to tell you the truth I do not like the idea of typing in code to make a presentation. I'd rather have a very simple text file with some simple letter combinations that the software would pick up. Something like what Anonymous Monk posted (would like to see his mysterious presentation tool).

Maybe what yours does is something like that, I'll look at it some more. Last week I made an Impress presentation (on OSS...) which crashed quite often on my 128MB linux machine but now I have 2.0bc of openoffice.org and it seems much stronger (at least in writer which is what I tested).

So your kind of lightweight idea is refreshing; I don't need animations but do need a simple way to get these things out and portable, viewable by other people too, and to look good. I know I had to look for powerpoint templates to convert in since the ones that came with ooo were so bad.