NAME¶

Impressive - presentation tool with eye candy

SYNOPSIS¶

impressive [OPTIONS...] FILES...

DESCRIPTION¶

Impressive is a simple presentation program that displays slideshows of image files (JPEG, PNG, TIFF and BMP) or PDF documents. Rendering is done via OpenGL, which allows for some "eye candy" effects.

OPTIONS¶

-a <seconds> or --auto <seconds> -A <X>:<Y> or --aspect <X>:<Y> -b or --noback -B <ms> or --boxfade <ms> -c <mode> or --cache <mode> -C <filename>[:<X>,<Y>] or --cursor <filename>[:<X>,<Y>] --clock -d <time> or --duration <time> -D <ms> or --mousedelay <ms> --darkness <percentage> -e or --noext -f --fullscreen --fake-fullscreen -F <file> or --font <file> -g <width>x<height>[+<posX>+<posY>] or --geometry <width>x<height>[+<posX>+ <posY>] -G <gamma>[:<blacklevel>] or --gamma <gamma>[: <blacklevel>] -h or --help -H or --half-screen -i <page> or --initialpage <page> -I <filename> or --script <filename> --invert -k or --auto-progress -l or --listtrans -L <spec> or --layout <spec> --min-box-size <pixels> -M or --minutes --nologo --noclicks -o <directory> or --output <directory> -O <mode> or --autooverview <mode> -p <start>-<end> or --pages <start>- <end> -P <path> or --gspath <path> -q or --page-progress -Q or --autoquit -r <n> or --rotate <n> -R <X>x<Y> or --meshres <X>x <Y> -s or --scale (image input only) -s or --supersample (PDF input only) -S <pixels> or --fontsize <pixels> --spot-radius <pixels> -t <ms> or --transition <trans1[,trans2...]> -T <ms> or --transtime <ms> -u <seconds> or --poll <seconds> -V <pixels> or --overscan <pixels> -w or --wrap -W or --nowheel --windowed -x or --fade -X or --shuffle -y or --auto-auto -z <factor> or --zoom <factor> -Z <ms> or --zoomtime <ms> --cachefile <filename>

ARGUMENTS¶

Following the options, the input file name(s) must be specified. Recognized file types are PDF, JPEG, PNG, TIFF, BMP and PGM/PPM. If the name of a directory is put on the command line, all recognized image files (no PDF files!) in this directory will be played in alphanumeric order (case-insensitive). In addition, Impressive can use a text file containing a list of files or directories to show: This text file must contain at most one file name per line; every character after a hash sign ( #) is treated as a comment and will be ignored. If such a comment is put on the same line as an image file name, it will be used as the page's title. List file names must be prefixed with an at sign ( @) on the command line, e.g. impressive @my_list_file. Impressive will also expand wild-card characters ( * and ?) if this isn't already done by the shell, but apart from that, it will not reorder the arguments. Thus, it will show the documents in the order specified at the command line.

LAYOUT OPTIONS¶

The OSD layout option ( -L/--layout) accepts a string with comma-separated key=value pairs. The following keywords are recognized: alpha margin time title page status The position specifications are composed by one character that indicates whether the text shall be displayed at the top ( T) or bottom (B) edge of the screen and one character that indicates whether it shall appear on the left ( L), on the right (R) or centered (C). For example, the default OSD layout equals the following option string: -L margin=16,alpha=1,time=TR,title=BL,page=BR,status=TL

EXAMPLES¶

The following examples illustrate some typical command lines. They assume that Impressive can be run by simply typing " impressive" on the command line. Depending on how Impressive is installed, this has to be substituted with the actual way to run Impressive (e.g. " python ~/impressive/impressive_dev.py" for a fresh SVN checkout). Furthermore, the file " demo.pdf" is used as the document to show here; obviously this has to be replaced by the path to the actual PDF file too. In the simplest case, Impressive is run directly with the name of the file to show and no further parameters. This will start a full-screen presentation with all settings at their defaults: impressive demo.pdf To just quickly check a slide deck, it might make sense to run Impressive in a small window and not full-screen. This can be done with something like impressive -f -g 800x600 demo.pdf Impressive can also be used in digital signage scenarios, like displays in shop windows with a permanent slideshow. This can be achieved by having Impressive advance to the next page automatically after a specified time (e.g. 10 seconds) and re-start the presentation from the start after the last slide: impressive -a 10 -w demo.pdf

USAGE¶

On startup, Impressive will display a black screen with the program logo at the center. If caching is enabled, but background rendering is disabled, all pages of the presentation will then be rendered once. A bar in the lower half of the screen displays the progress of this operation. Any key (except for Q and Esc) or mouse click skips this process, with the effect that Impressive will render the remaining pages on demand. Please note that the overview page will not be complete until every page has been rendered at least once. In other words, if the precaching process was skipped, placeholders will be displayed for all pages that have not been rendered yet. By default, Impressive will build up the cache in the background while the presentation runs. Thus, the progress bar will not appear and the preparation will only take the amount of time required to render the first two pages of the presentation. After this initialization process, Impressive will switch to the first page directly and without any transition.

CONTROLS¶

Esc key Q key LMB (left mouse button), mouse wheel down, Page Down key, Cursor Down key, Cursor Right key or Spacebar RMB (right mouse button), mouse wheel up, Page Up key, Cursor Up key, Cursor Left key or Backspace key Home key / End key Ctrl key (modifier) L key F key Tab key MMB (middle mouse button) LMB over a PDF hyperlink click&drag with LMB (left mouse button) RMB (right mouse button) over a highlight box S key T key R key C key Return key or Enter key + / - key, 9 / 0 key or mouse wheel in spotlight mode Ctrl+9 or Ctrl+0 keys 7 / 8 key Ctrl+7 or Ctrl+8 keys Z key [ / ] key { / } key \ key O key I key B / W key or . (dot) / , (comma) key click&drag with RMB (right mouse button) in zoom mode Cursor keys in overview mode Alt+Tab keys Any other alphanumeric (A-z, 0-9) or function key (F1-F12) can be used to assign shortcuts to pages that require quick access. If one of the keys is pressed together with Shift, the currently displayed page is associated with this key. To recall the page later, it is sufficient to press the shortcut key again. Shortcuts can be permanently stored with the S key.

INFO SCRIPTS¶

Impressive offers a powerful way to customize individual presentations using so-called info scripts. An info script is a text file having the same name and located in the same directory as the presentation file itself, except for the additional suffix .info. Thus, a presentation file called BrandNewProduct.pdf would have a info script with the name BrandNewProduct.pdf.info. If multiple arguments were specified on the command line, the info script will be called just .info (a dot file, so to speak). If a directory name was specified as the only argument, either a file called DirectoryName.info or a file called .info inside the directory will be used, depending on whether a path separator was specified at the end of the directory name or not - Impressive simply appends .info to whatever the input path name was. In any case, the default file name can be overridden by the -I command line option. Info scripts are actually Python scripts with full access to Impressive's global data structures and functions. (It is possible to write real interactive applications using info scripts.) Thus, they can modify a broad range of settings concerning Impressive. This manual will only cover the most basic ones.

PAGE PROPERTIES¶

The main part of an info script defines the properties of each page. At the moment, the following properties are defined: title transition transtime overview skip boxes timeout radius darkness comment sound video always progress reset rotate OnEnter, OnLeave, OnEnterOnce, OnLeaveOnce keys invert The properties are stored together in a Python dictionary called PageProps. The syntax looks like in this example:

  PageProps = {
    1: {
         'title': "Title Page",
         'transition': PagePeel,
         'sound': "background_music.mp3"
       },
    2: {
         'title': "Another Page",
         'timeout': 5000
       }
  }

The PageProps definition (and only the PageProps definition) will be rewritten by Impressive if the S key is pressed. User-defined PageProps entries will also be left untouched, except for some pretty-printing.

GLOBAL PRESENTATION PROPERTIES¶

The name of the presentation is shown in the title bar of the Impressive window (if not in fullscreen mode). By default, the file name or (if available) PDF metadata title will be used for this purpose, but the presentation title can also be explicitly set by overwriting the DocumentTitle variable: DocumentTitle = "My Presentation" Another useful variable, AvailableTransitions, contains a list of all transition classes that may be used for randomly assigning transitions to pages lacking the transition property. Thus, if a certain transition is undesired (either because of personal dislike or because it shall be used exclusively on pages where it is manually assigned using PageProps), something like the following can be written: AvailableTransitions.remove(WipeBlobs) On the other side, it's possible to activate transitions that are not enabled by default: AvailableTransitions += [SlideUp, SlideDown] Alternatively, AvailableTransitions can be completely overwritten to have the same transition (or set of transitions) assigned to all pages: AvailableTransitions = [Crossfade]

OPTION OVERRIDES¶

Another use of info scripts is overriding the default or command-line settings on a per-file basis. This can be done by simply overwriting one of the variables that are defined at the beginning of impressive.py. Each of these variables corresponds either to a command-line setting, or to some constant related to visual appearance or performance. So, for example, to force fullscreen mode for a presentation, write Fullscreen = True

WORKING DIRECTORIES¶

The working directory while executing the info scripts themselves is always the directory in which the info script is stored in. The base directory for external actions that originate from Page Properties or PDF hyperlinks is always the directory of the PDF or image file this page belongs to. In other words, if e.g. 'sound': "music.mp3" is written in the info script for one page of presentation.pdf, the file music.mp3 is expected to be located in the same directory as presentation.pdf.

AUTHOR¶

Impressive and its documentation has been written mainly by Martin J. Fiedler <martin.fiedler@gmx.net>, with small portions of the code written by external contributors. See the source code file for details.

REPORTING BUGS¶

Report bugs to to <martin.fiedler@gmx.net>.