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Présentation.app

Présentation.app is a presentation tool for pdf slides (e.g. produced using LaTeX and the popular beamer class, but it does not depend on LaTeX) for Mac OS X.

Its most notable features are:

a presenter view displaying: the current and next slide; a timer; and the notes associated to the current slide.

displaying: the current and next slide; a timer; and the notes associated to the current slide. a presentation view displaying: the current slide; and optionally: live annotations; inset video of the presenter; spotlight to highlight part of the slide.

displaying: the current slide; and optionally: live annotations; inset video of the presenter; spotlight to highlight part of the slide. hyperlinks do work: internal links (e.g. navigation links generated by beamer) work; links to local video files open the video on the presentation screen; links to other files are opened in a webview on the presentation screen.

do work: internal links (e.g. navigation links generated by beamer) work; links to local video files open the video on the presentation screen; links to other files are opened in a webview on the presentation screen. usable: from the command line (as it is a Python script); from the Finder (as it accepts dropping a PDF file to launch the app).

Copyright © 2012—2020, Renaud Blanch.

change log:

Context

I do not want to use Keynote (or PowerPoint or Impress) to prepare my presentations because they do not play well with VCS. Since I use LaTeX for most of my writings, I started using beamer. But I could not find a presentation tool for PDFs that provides a decent presenter view (à la Keynote). Hence, Présentation.app was born.

Features

Présentation.app main feature is its presenter view on the main display that shows the current and next slides, and its main view on the secondary display (if present) that shows the current slide. It also has some more or less original features:

a clock that displays the current time or a (countdown) timer;

the content of PDF notes are displayed below the current slide;

navigation links inside the PDF do work;

external links can be followed, and the main view then toggles to a full screen web view or a video view if the links leads to a video on the local file system;

the app is in fact a script that can be used from the command line;

LaTeX integration

If you use beamer or any other LaTeX package to produce your slides, you can use the pdfcomment package to insert notes into your presentation that will be displayed on the presenter view. You can use the following definition to move the note away from the main content of your slide:

\usepackage{pdfcomment}

ewcommand{\pdfnote}[1]{\marginnote{\pdfcomment[icon=note]{#1}}} ... \pdfnote{remember to say hello}

Présentation.app also handles nicely notes generated by beamer (see chapter 19 of the Beamer User Guide), provided they are typeset with the following option:

\documentclass{beamer} \usepackage{pgfpages} \setbeameroption{show notes on second screen} \begin{document} \begin{frame} A frame.

ote{This is shown on the right.} \end{frame} \end{document}

You can also link to web site or local files that will be opened by a web view:

\href{http://iihm.imag.fr/blanch/software/osx-presentation}{Présentation.app} \href{run:test.py}{content of test.py}



ewcommand{\pdfmovie}[4]{\href{run:#1}{\framebox{\parbox[c][#3][c]{#2}{\center #4}}}} ... \pdfmovie{720p25_pedestrian.mov}{6cm}{4cm}{H.264 avi}

Downloads

Présentation.app is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

You can download a disk image containing the latest version of Présentation.app or a previous release. Présentation.app development takes place at foss.heptapod.net/macos-apps/osx-presentation, you are more than welcome to request features and to contribute merge requests!

Command Line

Présentation.app is mainly a script that can be used from command line. You can get the bare script directly from the development repository:

% curl https://foss.heptapod.net/macos-apps/osx-presentation/raw/branch/default/presentation.py -o /usr/local/bin/presentation.py % chmod a+x /usr/local/bin/presentation.py

% sudo ln -s /Applications/Présentation.app/Contents/MacOS/presentation.py /usr/local/bin/

% presentation.py --help Usage: presentation.py [-hvd:f] <doc.pdf> -h --help print this help message then exit -v --version print version then exit -i --icon print icon then exit -d --duration <t> duration of the talk in minutes -f --feed enable reading feed on stdin <doc.pdf> file to present