Collect yourself half-a-dozen holiday snap JPEGs into a folder. Open your favourite editor and start a textfile with:

# This is my script for !Yassa.
# Elvis lives!

... and save it as !!Script inside that folder.

It's a good idea to start by specifying what screen mode you want the presentation to run in. You do this with the screen command. For example:

screen
{
   width = 1024
   height = 768
   colours = 256 # or this could be 32k or 16m
}

After this, you might want to use the set command, which just lets you set various aspects of Yassa's behaviour (like pointer usage, printing 'slide' numbers, and so on). For example:

set
{
  show_filenames = no
  show_counts = yes
  allow_pointer = no
}

Neither of the above two commands are compulsory, but it's a good idea to add them. I'm sure you'll be messing with them later.

Now we can get on with showing some pictures. Lets say you have three JPEGs, and you want Yassa to wait for a keypress between each one. This is as simple as:

jpeg
{
  filename = HotelPic
  style = scaled
}

waitforkey

jpeg
{
  filename = BeachPic
  style = scaled
}

waitforkey

jpeg
{
  filename = AirportPic
  style = scaled
}

waitforkey

Save your edits back to the !!Script file, and drag the folder onto Yassa's Iconbar icon. Click "Go!". See Controlling the Presentation for a reminder of keypresses.

And that's your first home-grown presentation!

Next, try replacing all the instances of waitforkey with

pause
{
  delay = 5
}

and right at the end of the script, add a

restart

Re-run the presentation again (no need to redrag the folder - just click "Go!") and now your slides will advance by themselves, every five seconds. At the end of the presentation it will loop back to the start.

Reading through a !!Script that Yassa generates will probably make more sense now.

Next, have a quick look at all the commands that Yassa recognises, so that you can get some idea of what you can do.

Previous: The Scriptfile structure
Next: Command Reference

This page was last updated March 2005.