NAME¶
pdfpc - pdf presentater console with multi-monitor support
SYNOPSIS¶
pdfpc [options] PDF-file
DESCRIPTION¶
pdfpc is a GTK based presentation viewer application which uses Keynote like
multi-monitor output to provide meta information to the speaker during the
presentation. It is able to show a normal presentation window on one screen,
while showing a more sophisticated overview on the other one providing
information like a picture of the next slide, as well as the left over time
till the end of the presentation. The input files processed by pdfpc are PDF
documents, which can be created using nearly any of today's presentation
software.
To run pdfppc, simply type
By default the presenter view appears in the primary monitor and the
presentation view in the second monitor (provided you have two monitors). If
you want to swith displays, start with the -s option (see below).
OPTIONS¶
- -d, --duration=N
- Duration in minutes of the presentation used for timer display. If not
given or if a value of 0 is specified, the clock just measures the time in
the presentation.
- -e, --end-time=T
- End time of the presentation. (Format: HH:MM (24h))
- -l, --last-minutes=N
- Time in minutes, from which on the timer changes its color. (Default 5
minutes)
- -t, --start-time=T
- Start time of the presentation to be used as a countdown. (Format: HH:MM
(24h))
- -u, --current-size=N
- Percentage of the presenter screen to be used for the current slide.
(Default 60)
- -o, --overview-min-size=N
- Minimum width for the overview miniatures, in pixels. (Default 150)
- -s, --switch-screens
- Switch the presentation and the presenter screen.
- -c, --disable-cache
- Disable caching and pre-rendering of slides to save memory at the cost of
speed.
- -z, --disable-compression
- Disable the compression of slide images to trade memory consumption for
speed. (Avg. factor 30)
- -b, --black-on-end
- Add an additional black slide at the end of the presentation
- -S, --single-screen
- Force to use only one screen
- -L, --list-actions
- List actions supported in the config file(s)
- -h, --help
- Shows the help
KEYBINDINGS¶
These are the default keybindings for pdfpc:
- Right cursor key / Page down / Return / Space / Left mouse
button
- Go forward one slide
- Shift + Right cursor key / Page down / Return / Space / Left mouse
button / Mouse wheel down or right
- Go forward 10 slides
- Down cursor key
- Go forward one user slide (see Overlays below)
- Left cursor key / Page up / Right mouse button / Mouse wheel up or
left
- Go back one slide
- Shift + Left cursor key / Page up / Right mouse button
- Go back 10 slides
- Up cursor key
- Go back one "user slide" (see Overlays below)
- Home
- Go to the first slide
- End
- Go to the last slide
- Backspace
- Go back in history. Note that history is defined by "jump"
commands, not by normal slide movement.
- Tab / Middle mouse button
- Overview mode
- g
- Input a slide number to jump to
- Escape / q
- Exit pdfpc
- b
- Turn off the presentation view (i.e. fill it with a black color)
- n
- Edit note for current slide
- f
- Freeze the current presentation display (the presenter display is still
fully active)
- o
- Toggle the overlay flag for one particular slide (see Overlays below)
- p
- Pause timer
- r
- Reset presentation (reset timer and go back to first slide)
- e
- Define end slide
See
CONFIG FILE below if you want to customize the keybindings.
FEATURES¶
Caching / Prerendering¶
To allow fast changes between the different slides of the presentation the pdf
pages are prerendered to memory. The progress bar on the bottom of the
presenter screen indicates how many percent of the slides have been
pre-rendered already. During the initial rendering phase this will slow down
slide changes, as most cpu power is used for the rendering process in the
background. After the cache is fully primed however the changing of slides
should be much faster, as with normal pdf viewers.
As the prerendering takes a lot of memory it can be disabled using the
--disable-cache switch at the cost of speed.
Cache compression¶
The prerendered and cached slides can be compressed in memory to save up some
memory. Without compression a set of about 100 pdf pages can easily grow up to
about 1.5gb size. Netbooks with only 1gb of memory would swap themselves to
death if prerendering is enabled in such a situation. The compression is
enabled by default as it does not harm rendering speed in a noticeable way on
most systems. It does however slows down prerendering by about a factor of 2.
If you have got enough memory and want to ensure the fastest possible
prerendering you can disable slide compression by using the -z switch. But be
warned using the uncompressed prerendering storage will use about 30 times the
memory the new compressed storage utilizes (aka the 1.5gb become about 50mb)
Timer¶
If a duration is given (-d option), the timer will show a countdown with the
given parameters. If no duration is specified (or if a value of 0 is given to
the -d option), the timer will show how much time has been spent. The duration
is stored automatically, so you do not need to repeat it for every invocation.
The timer is started if you are navigating away from the first page for the
first time. This feature is quite useful as you may want to show the titlepage
of your presentation while people are still entering the room and the
presentation hasn't really begun yet. If you want to start over you can use
the r key which will make the presenter reset the timer.
If a duration is given, at the moment the timer reaches the defined last-minutes
value it will change color to indicate your talk is nearing its end. As soon
as the timer reaches the zero mark (00:00:00) it will turn red and count
further down showing a negative time, to provide information on how many
minutes you are overtime.
Notes¶
Textual notes can be displayed for each slide. While in the presentation,
pressing n will allow you to take notes for the screen. To go out of editing
mode, press the Escape key. Note that while editing a note the keybindings
stop working, i.e. you are not able to change slides.
The notes are stored in the given file in a plain text format, easy to edit also
from outside the program. See the section about the pdfpc format below.
Overview mode¶
Pressing tab you can enter the overview mode, where miniatures for the slides
are shown. You can select one slide to jump to with the mouse or with the
arrow keys. You can also define overlays and the end slide (see next sections)
in this mode.
Overlays¶
Many slide preparation systems allow for overlays, i.e. sets of slides that are
logically grouped together as a single, changing slide. Examples include
enumerations where the single items are displayed one after another or rough
"animations", where parts of a picture change from slide to slide.
Pdf Presenter Console includes facilities for dealing with such overlays.
In this description, we will differentiation between slides (i.e. pages in the
pdf document) and "user slides", that are the logical slides. The
standard forward movement command (page down, enter, etc.) moves through one
slide at a time, as expected. That means that every step in the overlay is
traversed. The backward movement command works differently depending if the
current and previous slides are part of an overlay:
- •
- If the current slide is part of an overlay we just jump to the previous
slide. That means that we are in the middle of an overlay we can jump
forward and backward through the single steps of it
- •
- If the current slide is not part of an overlay (or if it is the first
one), but the previous slides are, we jump to the previous user slide.
This means that when going back in the presentation you do not have to go
through every step of the overlay, Pdf Presenter Console just shows the
first slide of the each overlay. As you normally only go back in a
presentation when looking for a concrete slide, this is more
convenient.
The up and down cursor keys work on a user slide basis. You can use them to skip
the rest of an overlay or to jump to the previous user slide, ignoring the
state of the current slide.
When going through an overlay, two additional previews may be activated in the
presenter view, just below the main view, showing the next and the previous
slide in an overlay.
Pdf Presenter Console tries to find these overlays automatically by looking into
the page labels in the pdf file. For LaTeX this works correctly at least with
the beamer class and also modifying the page numbers manually (compiling with
pdflatex). If your preferred slide-producing method does not work correctly
with this detection, you can supply this information using the o key for each
slide that is part of an overlay (except the first one!). The page numbering
is also adapted. This information is automatically stored.
End slide¶
Some people like to have some additional, backup slides after the last slide in
the actual presentation. Things like bibliographic references or slides
referring to specialized questions are typical examples. Pdf Presenter Console
lets you define which is the last slide in the actual presentation vie the 'e'
key. This just changes the progress display in the presenter screen, as to
have a better overview of how many slides are left.
pdfpc Files¶
The notes and other additional information are stored in a file with the
extension "pdfpc". When invoking Pdf Presenter Console with a non
pdfpc file, it automatically checks if there exists such a file and in this
case loads the additional information. This means that you normally do not
have to deal with this kind of files explicitly.
There are however cases where you may want to edit the files manually. The most
typical case is if you add or remove some slides after you have edited notes
or defined overlays. It may be quicker to edit the pdfpc file than to re-enter
the whole information. Future versions may include external tools for dealing
with this case automatically.
The files are plain-text files that should be fairly self-explanatory. A couple
of things to note:
- •
- The slide numbers of the notes refer to user slides
- •
- The [notes] sections must be the last one in the file
- •
- For the programmers out there: slide indexes start at 1
CONFIG FILE¶
The main configuration file for pdfpc is located in /etc/pdfpcrc. Additionally,
$HOME/.pdfpcrc is also read, if present. Following commands are aceepted
- bind <key> <func>
- Bind a key to a function
- unbind <key>
- Unbinds the given key
- unbind_all
- Unbinds all the keybindings
- mouse <button> <func>
- Binds a mouse button to a function
- unmouse <button>
- Unbinds a mouse button
- unmouse_all
- Unbinds all the mouse bindings
- switch-screens
- Switches screens, in the same way as the command line parameter with the
same name.
Key names can be obtained with the help of the xev utility. Note that names are
case sensitive. Modifiers can be specified in the form <mod>+<key>
where <mod> is one of S (for shift), C (for control) and A/M (for
Alt/Meta). E.g.
- bind S+Next next10
A list of all possible functions can be obtained via the -L command line option.
Under
http://davvil.github.com/pdfpc#configs you can find some
configuration files for commonly used devices (wireles presenters, bluetooth
headesets, ...). If your device is not yet supported and you generated a
working config file, please contribute it (see contact information below).
BUGS¶
There may be a small memory leak in the program. I am trying to solve it. It
should not be too important for up to some hundreds of slides.
Other bugs can be reported at
https://github.com/davvil/pdfpc/issues
Comments and suggestion are welcome. Write an email to
davvil@gmail.com
SEE ALSO¶
pdfpc is a fork of pdf-presenter console, available at
http://westhoffswelt.de/projects/pdf_presenter_console.html