Ubuntu Manpage: pdfpc - pdf presentater console with multi-monitor support

Provided by: pdf-presenter-console_3.1.1-2_amd64

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

              pdfpc file.pdf

       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

CONTACT

       Comments and suggestion are welcome. Write an email to davvil@gmail.com