pdfpc(1)
NAME
pdfpc - PDF presenter console with multi-monitor support
SYNOPSIS
pdfpc [options] PDF-file
DESCRIPTION
pdfpc is a GTK-based presentation viewer for GNU/Linux 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 time left in the presentation. pdfpc
processes PDF documents, which can be created using nearly all modern
presentation software.
To run pdfpc, 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 switch 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))
-C, --time-of-day
Display the time of the day
-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)
-g, --disable-auto-grouping
Disable auto detection of overlay groups. (Default: enabled)
-S, --single-screen
Force to use only one screen
-L, --list-actions
List actions supported in the config file(s)
-w, --windowed
Run in windowed mode
-Z, --size
Size of the presentation window in width:height format (forces
windowed mode)
-n, --notes=P
Position of notes on the PDF page. Position can be either left,
right, top or bottom. Disable slide auto-grouping (Default:
none)
-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
Plus / Equal / KP_Add / Bracket Left
Increase Notes Font Size
Minus / KP_Substract / Bracket Right
Decrease Notes Font Size
8 Toggle Pointer Mode
7 Decrease pointer size
9 Increase pointer size
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 / Pre-rendering
To allow fast changes between the different slides of the presentation
the PDF pages are pre-rendered 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 pre-rendering takes a lot of memory it can be disabled using the
--disable-cache switch at the cost of speed.
Cache compression
The pre-rendered 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 1.5 GB size. Netbooks with only 1 GB of memory
would swap themselves to death if pre-rendering 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
slow down pre-rendering by about a factor of two. If you have got
enough memory and want to ensure the fastest possible pre-rendering you
can disable slide compression by using the -z switch. But be warned
using the uncompressed pre-rendering storage will use about 30 times
the memory the new compressed storage utilizes (e.g. 50 MB will become
about 1.5 GB).
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 title page of your presentation while people are still entering the
room and the presentation has not 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. Pdfpc includes facilities for dealing with such
overlays.
In this description, we will differentiate 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, pdfpc 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.
Pdfpc 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.
Pdfpc lets you define which is the last slide in the actual
presentation via 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.
Movies
Pdfpc can play back movies included in the PDF file. Movies may be
started and stopped by clicking within their area. For the presenter,
a progress bar is drawn along the bottom of the movie. This expands
when the mouse hovers over it, allowing one to seek by clicking or
dragging within the progress bar. Switching slides automatically stops
playback, and movies will be reset after leaving and returning to a
slide.
Movies may be included in PDF files as "screen annotations". pdfpc
does not yet support options that modify the playback of these movies.
In LaTeX, such movies may be added to a presentation with the "movie15"
or "multimedia" package. Note that the poster, autoplay, and repeat
options are not yet supported. (Also, run ps2pdf with the -dNOSAFER
flag.)
As a perhaps simpler option, pdfpc will play back movies linked from a
hyperlink of type "launch". A query string may be added to the URL of
the movie to enable the "autostart", "loop" and "noprogress"
properties, if necessary. (E.g., a link to
"movie.avi?autostart&loop&noprogress" will add a video that starts
playing automatically, loops when it reaches the end, and does not show
the progress bar.)
In LaTeX, such links are created with
\usepackage{hyperref}
\href{run:<movie file>}{<placeholder content>}
The movie will playback in the area taken by the placeholder content.
Using a frame of the movie will ensure the correct aspect ratio.
Pointer Mode
If needed it is possible to turn on a pointer which draws a red dot in
the place pointed by mouse cursor on both - presenter and presentation
screens. It is also possible to increase and decrease the pointer
size. Additionally when the pointer is enabled it is possible to drag &
drop some area of the presenter screen causing it to be highlighted in
both views as well. Area outside the selected region will be dimmed.
pdfpc Files
The notes and other additional information are stored in a file with
the extension "pdfpc". When pdfpc is invoked with a PDF file, it
automatically checks for and loads the associated pdfpc file, if it
exists. 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 FILES
The main configuration file for pdfpc is located in /etc/pdfpcrc.
Additionally, $XDG_CONFIG_DIR/pdfpc/pdfpcrc is also read, if present.
Keybindings
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
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 shorthand for specifying key combinations constituting shift and an
alphabetic character is to simply give the uppercase version of the
alphabetic character. For example, to bind <shift>+r to the 'reset'
function, use
bind R reset
A list of all possible functions can be obtained via the -L command
line option.
Some configuration files for commonly used devices (wireless
presenters, Bluetooth headsets, ...) are available https://
pdfpc.github.io/#config-files. If your device is not yet supported
and you generated a working config file, please contribute it (see
contact information below).
Options
Some permanent changes can be configured via config file. The syntax
is:
option <option_name> <option_value>
The following option_name are allowed:
current-size
Percentage of the presenter screen to be used for the current
slide. (int, Default 60)
current-height
Percentage of the height of the presenter screen to be used for
the current slide. (int, Default 80)
next-height
Percentage of the height of the presenter screen to be used for
the next slide. (int, Default 70)
overview-min-size
Minimum width for the overview miniatures, in pixels. (int,
Default 150)
black-on-end
Add an additional black slide at the end of the presentation
(bool, Default false)
switch-screens
Switch the presentation and the presenter screen. (bool, Default
false)
Appearance
With GTK3 it is possible to modify the appearance of pdfpc. There are
two locations where pdfpc is looking for files. The default location is
/usr/share/pixmaps/pdfpc/pdfpc.css. A user can copy it to
$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/pdfpc/pdfpc.css and change the attributes as he likes.
INTEGRATION WITH OTHER TOOLS
Pdfpc provides a dbus interface that other tools can use to execute any action listed by --list-actions. The interface appears on the session bus as io.github.pdfpc.
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 the issue tracker https://github.com/ pdfpc/pdfpc/issues.
SEE ALSO
pdfpc was previously developed by davvil https://github.com/davvil/ pdfpc. pdfpc is a fork of Pdf Presenter Console, available online https:// github.com/jakobwesthoff/Pdf-Presenter-Console.
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