pdfpc man page
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 win‐
dow 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 moni‐
tors). 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. (For‐
mat: 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
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 but
ton / 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" com‐
mands, 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
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 bot‐
tom 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 mem‐
ory 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 near‐
ing 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 pro‐
vide information on how many minutes you are overtime.
Notes
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. Exam‐
ples 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 previ‐
ous 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 Con‐
sole 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
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 /usr/local/etc/pdf‐
pcrc. 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.
CONTACT
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://westhoff
swelt.de/projects/pdf_presenter_console.html
Jun 2012 pdfpc(1)
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