Pdf presentater console with multi-monitor support
pdfpc [options] PDF-file
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\[aq]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).
-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
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.
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.
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)
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\[aq]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.
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.
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.
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.
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 \[aq]e\[aq] key. This just changes the progress display in the presenter screen, as to have a better overview of how many slides are left.
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
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).
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 [email protected]
pdfpc is a fork of pdf-presenter console, available at http://westhoffswelt.de/projects/pdf_presenter_console.html