Markdown extension for speaker notes

[lccanon]

It would be useful to specify some text in a markdown file as hidden notes. This text could then be used as speaker notes for different presentation formats:

• beamer with note{}
• reveal.js with aside blocks
• impress.js (if it is eventually integrated as a writer) through impress-console and the notes class
• docbook (related to Issue Markdown extension suggestion: note #354 which is already solved)

There are some solutions:

• the previous docbook issue (Markdown extension suggestion: note #354) proposes to begin a paragraph with Note:
• for reveal.js, it was proposed to put a line containing [[[ before any note block and 2 or 3 empty lines after
• on stackoverflow, each spoiler line must start with >! (even though, it poses a problem for Latex outputs)
• the School of Haskell Markdown uses @@@ fences for hiding solutions (see Pull Initial support for supporting School of Haskell Markdown #832 and this)

I think the first solution (Note:) is the one that is the most readable in plain text. There could be two ways to use it:

Note: This sentence is a simple note.

Note:
    This indented block is a note:
    - this is the first item of the note
    - this is the second item

    This is the last sentence of this note.

It may also be generalized as a solution for hiding content (Hidden: instead of Note:?) with a general option like --include-hidden-notes for generating output with the notes and no note by default. I could use such a mechanism in an educational context for generating questions with and without corrections (in this case, a pdf or latex writer could use a solution similar to what is provided by the exam class). It may also be related to Issue #254 if we consider that comments are hidden content that should not be present in the output by default.

The scope of a general mechanism may be too large, but it would be great to add speaker notes and to control their inclusions in the output presentations as I do not always distribute my notes (but this last inclusion feature may be only relevant in an education context).

[stavnstrup]

+1

[certainlyakey]

I agree, this would be a useful feature. Now I have to write speaker notes as comments in source markdown and have it opened while the presentation is going.

[jgm]

It's easy to do this already for revealjs:

# Slide

- one
- two

<aside class="notes">
Here are some speaker notes.

This can *contain markdown*.
</aside>

# Next slide

Beamer doesn't seem to have good support for speaker notes -- it's a huge kludge involving a double-wide PDF. So I'm not inclined to support these generally at the moment.

[stavnstrup]

Currently, I am using HTML comments for notes in presentations for Beamer. Using XHTML or DocBook as intermediate format, the comment can without much effort be transformed to a notes-only document, so support of notes in Beamer is not really essential, but only an interesting non-essential feature.

[sjackman]

See http://pandoc.org/MANUAL.html#speaker-notes