1IMPRESSIVE(1) Impressive Documentation IMPRESSIVE(1)
2
6 Impressive - presentation tool with eye candy
7
9 impressive [OPTIONS...] FILES...
10
12 Impressive is a simple presentation program that displays slideshows of
13 image files (JPEG, PNG, TIFF and BMP) or PDF documents. Rendering is
14 done via OpenGL, which allows for some "eye candy" effects.
15
17 -a <seconds> or --auto <seconds>
18 Automatically advance to the next page after the given number of
19 seconds. Together with the -w option (described below), this can
20 be used to create automatic slideshows.
21 -A <X>:<Y> or --aspect <X>:<Y>
23 Specifies the display aspect ratio. Normally, Impressive assumes
24 that the pixel aspect ratio is 1:1 (square pixels), regardless
25 of the display resolution that has been set up. If a resolution
26 has been selected that doesn't match the display's aspect ratio,
27 the screen will be distorted. To overcome this, this option may
28 be used to manually specify the display aspect ratio, e.g. "-A
29 16:9". Note that this option has no effect if Xpdf is used for
30 rendering.
31 -b or --noback
33 Disabled background rendering. By default, Impressive will
34 pre-render all pages in a separate background thread while the
35 presentation runs. If this option is specified, it will instead
36 render all pages immediately on startup. This option has no
37 effect if caching is disabled (--cache none, see below).
38 -B <ms> or --boxfade <ms>
40 Sets the duration (in milliseconds) of the highlight box
41 fade-in/fade-out animation. Default value: 100 ms.
42 -c <mode> or --cache <mode>
44 Specifies the page cache mode to use. Valid options are:
45 none
46 Disables page caching altogether, only the current and
47 the following page will be kept in RAM. Jumping between
48 pages will be very slow, because Impressive will need to
49 render the requested pages on the fly. In addition, the
50 overview page won't be complete until every page has been
51 shown at least once.
52 memory
53 Caches all page images in memory. This is the fastest
54 method, but it requires very large amounts of memory
55 (about 3 MiB per page at 1024x768 resolution).
56 disk
57 Like above, but uses a temporary file rather than memory
58 for storage. This is the default.
59 persistent
60 Uses a permanent cache file for caching. This file will
61 not be deleted when Impressive quits and will be reused
62 on subsequent invocations. The default name for the cache
63 file is derived like the names for Info Scripts (see
64 below for an explanation), but with a .cache file name
65 extension instead of .info. This method is a little bit
66 slower than disk mode, but the time span until the over‐
67 view page is fully populated will be significantly
68 decreased if Impressive is ran again with the same input
69 files and options.
70 The mode name may be abbreviated at will, down to one character.
71 Thus, --cache persistent, -c persist and even -cp are all syn‐
72 onyms.
73 -C <filename>[:<X>,<Y>] or --cursor <filename>[:<X>,<Y>]
75 This option can be used to specify the path to an image file
76 (typically a transparent .png) that shall be used as the mouse
77 cursor instead of the default one. Optionally, the hotspot may
78 be specified (this is the position inside the cursor image where
79 the real mouse position is located). Example: --cursor mycur‐
80 sor.png:2,4
81 -d <time> or --duration <time>
83 Specifies the expected run time of the presentation. The time
84 parameter can be either a number of seconds or a human-readable
85 time like 1:23 (1 minute and 23 seconds), 4:56h (4 hours and 56
86 minutes), 3m45s (3 minutes and 45 seconds), 5m (5 minutes) or
87 1:23:45 (1 hour, 23 minutes and 45 seconds).
88 If an expected duration is specified, Impressive will show a
89 semi-transparent green progress bar at the lower edge of the
90 screen, indicating how much time has already passed. If the time
91 is up, the bar will occupy the whole edge and fade to yellow (at
92 125% of the expected time) to red (at 150% or more).
93 -D <ms> or --mousedelay <ms>
95 Sets the time (in milliseconds) the mouse cursor is shown in
96 fullscreen mode if it is not moved. Default value: 3000 ms.
97 -e or --noext
99 OpenGL normally only supports textures with power-of-two dimen‐
100 sions. This means that for a 1024x768 screen, the actual texture
101 size will be 1024x1024, for 1600x1200 it will even be 2048x2048.
102 To overcome this limit and save texture memory, Impressive will
103 automatically use the OpenGL extensions GL_ARB_texture_rectangle
104 (available on most graphics cards) or GL_ARB_tex‐
105 ture_non_power_of_two (available on modern graphics cards with
106 current drivers). If these cause any trouble, the -e option may
107 be used to prevent Impressive from using the problematic exten‐
108 sions.
109 -f or --fullscreen
111 Toggles fullscreen mode. By default, fullscreen mode is acti‐
112 vated, and can be deactivated using this switch.
113 -F <file> or --font <file>
115 Impressive uses some kind of text OSD to overlay the current
116 page number and title (if available) on the overview page. This
117 option can be used to specify a TrueType font file (.ttf) to use
118 for the OSD. If the path specified doesn't directly point to a
119 useable font file, Impressive will try to search the system font
120 directories. It assumes that all fonts are stored below /usr/
121 share/fonts, /usr/local/share/fonts or /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/
122 TTF for this purpose (the latter one is useful for Mac OS X sys‐
123 tems specifically). If this option is not specified, any of
124 DejaVuSans.ttf or Vera.ttf (the typical file name of Bitstream
125 Vera Sans) will be used as a default.
126 -g <width>x<height> or --geometry <width>x<height>
128 Sets the screen size or resolution Impressive shall use (in pix‐
129 els). If xrandr is installed, the default screen size for
130 fullscreen mode is the current screen resolution; on other plat‐
131 forms, Impressive uses the highest resolution available to the
132 graphics system. If a standard resolution cannot be determined,
133 the default is 1024x768 pixels. Note that this option is not the
134 standard X "geometry" option and does therefore not support win‐
135 dow positioning (e.g. -g 800x600+0-0 will not work!).
136 -G <gamma>[:<blacklevel>] or --gamma <gamma>[:<blacklevel>]
138 Sets up the startup gamma and (optional) black level value. The
139 black level is the original image's intensity level (0...254)
140 that is to be mapped to black in Impressive's output. Note that
141 gamma and black level adjustments may be unavailable or con‐
142 strained on some systems.
143 -h or --help
145 If this option is specified, Impressive writes a short command
146 line help screen to standard output and does not start a presen‐
147 tation.
148 -i <page> or --initialpage <page>
150 Specifies the page number to start with. The default value is 1
151 (start with the first page). If another value is specified, the
152 page shown by Impressive right after initialization is not the
153 first one of the PDF or image list. Additionally, pre-rendering
154 (if enabled) will also start at the specified page.
155 -I <filename> or --script <filename>
157 Overrides automatic derivation of the info script filename and
158 specifies a script file directly.
159 -l or --listtrans
161 If this option is specified, Impressive writes a list of all
162 available transition classes to standard output and does not
163 start a presentation. Transitions that are enabled by default
164 are marked with a star (*) left of the class name.
165 -L <spec> or --layout <spec>
167 Specified the OSD layout. Read below for an explanation of this
168 option
169 -M or --minutes
171 If this option is set, Impressive will show the on-screen timer
172 (activated with the [T] key) only with 1 minute resolution. By
173 default, it will show a timer with 1 second resolution.
174 --nologo
176 This option disables the Impressive logo and version number dis‐
177 play. Instead, the loading screen will be just black or, if
178 background rendering is disabled, only the progress bar will be
179 visible.
180 -o <directory> or --output <directory>
182 Do not display the presentation, but render it into a series of
183 PNG image files inside the specified directory. The images will
184 be generated in the current resolution as specified by the -g
185 option. This option is useful if you're going to give a presen‐
186 tation on a foreigh PC with an old, broken or otherwise problem‐
187 atic Xpdf or GhostScript installation: By generating images of
188 the PDF pages you can ensure that no rendering bugs will happen
189 on the target system.
190 -O <mode> or --autooverview <mode>
192 Enables or disables automatic derivation of whether a page shall
193 or shall not be shown on the overview page. This feature is
194 based on the fact that some LaTeX presentation packages tag all
195 pages with a title (that can be read by Impressive with the help
196 of pdftk), except those that contain multiple reveal steps.
197 The following modes are available:
198 off
199 Disables automatic overview mode. All pages will be shown
200 on the overview page by default. This is also the default
201 setting.
202 first
203 All pages with a PDF title will be shown on the overview
204 page. The purpose is to show the initial state of
205 multi-step slides on the overview page.
206 last
207 All pages before a page with a PDF title will be shown on
208 the overview page. The purpose is to show the final state
209 of multi-step slides on the overview page.
210 Again, the mode may be abbreviated arbitrarily, down to one
211 character, just like with the -c option above..
212 -p <start>-<end> or --pages <start>-<end>
214 Using this option, the range of the page displayed can be nar‐
215 rowed down. The presentation will start at the first page in the
216 range. All pages outside of the range will not be shown on the
217 overview page and will not be cached. However, they can be
218 entered manually when cycling through the presentation. Due to
219 the fact that these pages are uncached, preparation of the dis‐
220 play will take considerably longer.
221 -P <path> or --gspath <path>
223 This option can be used to override the Xpdf / GhostScript path
224 autodetection. The full path to the executable of either Ghost‐
225 Script (gs or gs.exe) or Xpdf's pdftoppm utility must be speci‐
226 fied.
227 -q or --page-progress
229 If this option is enabled, Impressive will show a light-blue
230 semi-transparent progress bar at the lower edge of the screen
231 that shows the position inside the presentation, i.e. the rela‐
232 tion between the current page number and the total number of
233 pages. Note that this progress bar will not be shown if the
234 duration progress bar (-d option) is also enabled.
235 -r <n> or --rotate <n>
237 Display all pages rotated by nx90 degrees clockwise. Try -r 1 or
238 -r 3 if you run into problems with PDFs generated by LaTeX on
239 some Xpdf or GhostScript versions.
240 -R <X>x<Y> or --meshres <X>x<Y>
242 Most effects subdivide the visible screen into a mesh of rectan‐
243 gular or quadratic pieces, each with its own coordinates and
244 alpha blend values. Using this parameter, the resolution of the
245 subdivision mesh can be defined. The default value is 48x36. On
246 slow machines, lower values like 24x18 or 12x9 can heavily speed
247 up transition rendering at the cost of visual quality. On the
248 other hand, higher values like 64x48 or 96x72 improve quality,
249 but use much more CPU cycles.
250 -s or --scale (image input only)
252 If a directory with image files is used as input, Impressive
253 will scale down images that are too big for the screen. But by
254 default, it will not scale up smaller images to fit the screen;
255 it will leave a black border instead. This option overrides this
256 setting and enables upscaling of smaller images.
257 -s or --supersample (PDF input only)
259 This switch enables antialiasing by 4x supersampling instead of
260 the normal multisampling method used by Xpdf or GhostScript.
261 While this usually degrades both visual quality and performance,
262 it may be necessary for circumventing white strips or moire-like
263 patterns in gradients.
264 -S <pixels> or --fontsize <pixels>
266 This option sets the size, in pixels, of the OSD font. The
267 default value is 14.
268 -t <ms> or --transition <trans1[,trans2...]>
270 Using this switch, the set of transitions Impressive will ran‐
271 domly draw at page changes can be specified. If only one transi‐
272 tion class is specified, this class will be used for all pages
273 that do not have another transition explicitly assigned in their
274 page properties. Multiple transitions have to be separated by
275 commas; they will be used in random order. The -l option can be
276 used to get a list of available transitions.
277 -T <ms> or --transtime <ms>
279 Sets the duration (in milliseconds) of page transitions. 0
280 (zero) disables transitions altogether. Default value: 1000 ms.
281 -u <seconds> or --poll <seconds>
283 If this option is specified, the source file or directory will
284 be checked for changed regularly. If a change in the input PDF
285 file or any of the image files in the input image directory is
286 detected, the page cache will be flushed and the current page as
287 well as the info script will be reloaded. The current page's
288 transition will be shown between the old and the new version of
289 the page.
290 The new PDF file must have at least as much pages as the old
291 one; also, it should have the same aspect ratio. If the input is
292 a directory, image files must not have disappeared.
293 -V <pixels> or --overscan <pixels>
295 PDF files often contain tiny amounts of white borders around the
296 edges which look bad in screen presentations. To eliminate this
297 problem, Impressive uses "overscan": PDF files will not be ren‐
298 dered to fit the screen size exactly, but they will be rendered
299 a bit larger so that the (possibly broken) borders can be
300 cropped off. The amount of overscan, in screen pixels, can be
301 set with this option. The default value is 3 pixels, which
302 should remove borders in most presentations at most common
303 screen resolutions without cropping the pages too much.
304 -w or --wrap
306 If this option is set, Impressive will "wrap" over to the first
307 page after the last page. In other words, advancing to the next
308 page at the end of the presentation will restart the whole pre‐
309 sentation.
310 -x or --fade
312 This option enables a smooth fade-in effect at the start of the
313 presentation and a fade-out effect just before Impressive quits.
314 -X or --shuffle
316 If this option is enabled, the input files will be shuffled into
317 random order before starting the presentation. The individual
318 pages of PDF input files will stay in their original order,
319 though, so this option is mainly useful for image presentations.
320 -z <factor> or --zoom <factor>
322 Sets the zoom factor that is used in zoom mode. It must be an
323 integer value of at least 2. The default value is 2. Note that
324 it might not be possible to get high-quality zooming for large
325 zoom factors due to hardware restrictions.
326 -Z <ms> or --zoomtime <ms>
328 Sets the duration (in milliseconds) of the overview page
329 zoom-in/zoom-out effects. Default value: 250 ms.
330 --cachefile <filename>
332 Activates persistent cache mode and specifies the name of the
333 cache file to use.
334
336 Following the options, the input file name(s) must be specified. Recog‐
337 nized file types are PDF, JPEG, PNG, TIFF, BMP and PGM/PPM. If the name
338 of a directory is put on the command line, all recognized image files
339 (no PDF files!) in this directory will be played in alphanumeric order
340 (case-insensitive).
341 In addition, Impressive can use a text file containing a list of files
343 or directories to show: This text file must contain at most one file
344 name per line; every character after a hash sign (#) is treated as a
345 comment and will be ignored. If such a comment is put on the same line
346 as an image file name, it will be used as the page's title. List file
347 names must be prefixed with an at sign (@) on the command line, e.g.
348 impressive @my_list_file.
349 Impressive will also expand wild-card characters (* and ?) if this
351 isn't already done by the shell, but apart from that, it will not
352 reorder the arguments. Thus, it will show the documents in the order
353 specified at the command line.
354
356 The OSD layout option (-L/--layout) accepts a string with comma-sepa‐
357 rated key=value pairs. The following keywords are recognized:
358 alpha
359 The opacity of the OSD text, either as a floating-point value
360 between 0 and 1 or a percentage between 2 and 100.
361 margin
362 The distance (in pixels) of the OSD text to the screen borders.
363 time
364 The position of the timer.
365 title
366 The position of the page title in overview mode.
367 page
368 The position of the page number in overview mode.
369 status
370 The position of the status line.
371 The position specifications are composed by one character that indi‐
372 cates whether the text shall be displayed at the top (T) or bottom (B)
373 edge of the screen and one character that indicates whether it shall
374 appear on the left (L), on the right (R) or centered (C).
375 For example, the default OSD layout equals the following option string:
377 -L margin=16,alpha=1,time=TR,title=BL,page=BR,status=TL
378
380 On startup, Impressive will display a black screen with the program
381 logo at the center. If caching is enabled, but background rendering is
382 disabled, all pages of the presentation will then be rendered once. A
383 bar in the lower half of the screen displays the progress of this oper‐
384 ation. Any key (except for Q and Esc) or mouse click skips this
385 process, with the effect that Impressive will render the remaining
386 pages on demand. Please note that the overview page will not be com‐
387 plete until every page has been rendered at least once. In other words,
388 if the precaching process was skipped, placeholders will be displayed
389 for all pages that have not been rendered yet. By default, Impressive
390 will build up the cache in the background while the presentation runs.
391 Thus, the progress bar will not appear and the preparation will only
392 take the amount of time required to render the first two pages of the
393 presentation.
394 After this initialization process, Impressive will switch to the first
396 page directly and without any transition.
397
399 Q key or Esc key
400 Quit Impressive immediately.
401 LMB (left mouse button), Page Down key, Cursor Down key, Cursor Right
403 key or Spacebar
404 Go to the next page (using a transition).
405 RMB (right mouse button), Page Up key, Cursor Up key, Cursor Left key
407 or Backspace key
408 Go to the previous page (using a transition).
409 Home key / End key
411 Go directly to the first or last page of the presentation.
412 L key
414 Return to the last (most recently displayed) page. This can be
415 used to toggle back and forth between two pages.
416 F key
418 Toggle fullscreen mode.
419 Tab key or MMB (middle mouse button)
421 Zoom back to the overview page. While in overview mode, a page
422 can be selected with the mouse and activated with the left mouse
423 button. The right or middle mouse button or the Tab key leave
424 overview mode without changing the current page.
425 LMB over a PDF hyperlink
427 Jump to the page referenced by the hyperlink. Two types of
428 hyperlinks are supported: Links that point to some other page of
429 the same document, and URL hyperlinks like Web links and e-mail
430 addresses. This feature is only available if pdftk is installed.
431 Furthermore, xdg-open from the freedesktop.org Portland project
432 is required for URL links to work. Please note that the hyper‐
433 link feature will not work properly when pages are rotated.
434 click&drag with LMB (left mouse button)
436 Create a new highlight box. While at least one highlight box is
437 defined on the current page, the page itself will be shown in a
438 darker and blurry rendition. Only the highlight boxes will be
439 displayed in their original lightness and sharpness.
440 If a page with highlight boxes is left, the boxes will be saved
441 and restored the next time this page is shown again.
442 RMB (right mouse button) over a highlight box
444 If the right mouse button is clicked while the mouse cursor is
445 above a highlight box, the box will be removed. If the last box
446 on a page is removed, the page will turn bright and sharp again.
447 S key
449 Save the info script associated with the current presentation.
450 The main purpose for this is to permanently save highlight boxes
451 or keyboard shortcuts, so they will be restored the next time
452 this presentation is started.
453 T key
455 Activate or deactivate the time display at the upper-right cor‐
456 ner of the screen. If the timer is activated while the very
457 first page of the presentation is shown, it activates "time
458 tracking" mode. In this mode, a report of all pages visited with
459 their display duration, enter and leave times will be written to
460 standard output. This can be very useful when preparing presen‐
461 tations.
462 R key
464 Reset the presentation timer.
465 Return key or Enter key
467 Toggle spotlight mode. In this mode, the page is darkened in the
468 same way as if highlight boxes are present, but instead of (or
469 in addition to) the boxes, a circular "spotlight" will be shown
470 around the mouse cursor position, following every motion of the
471 mouse cursor.
472 + key / - key or mouse wheel
474 Adjust the spotlight radius.
475 Z key
477 Toggle zoom mode. When this key is first pressed, the current
478 page will zoom in. The page will be displayed at double size,
479 but in its original resolution (i.e. it will be blurry). Impres‐
480 sive will re-render the page at the new resolution if the graph‐
481 ics hardware supports it. During this time, Impressive will not
482 accept any input, so don't even think about clicking the mouse
483 or pressing keys before the image gets crisp again.
484 In zoom mode, all other functions will work as normal. Any oper‐
485 ations that leave the current page, such as flipping the page or
486 entering the overview screen, will leave zoom mode, too.
487 [ / ] key
489 Adjust the gamma value of the display (might not be supported on
490 every hardware).
491 { / } key
493 Adjust the black level of the display (might not be supported on
494 every hardware).
495 \ key
497 Revert gamma and black level back to normal.
498 O key
500 This will toggle the "visible on overview page" flag of the cur‐
501 rent page. The result will not be visible immediately, but it
502 can be saved to the info script (using the S key) and will be in
503 effect the next time the presentation is started.
504 I key
506 This will toggle the skip flag of the current page. A page
507 marked as skipped will not be reachable with the normal forward/
508 backward navigation keys.
509 B key / W key
511 Fade to black or white, respectively. This feature can be used
512 if a whiteboard or blackboard in front of the projection area is
513 to be used during the presentation. Using these two keys, the
514 screen will fade into a solid color. On any keypress or mouse
515 click, it will fade back to normal. These keys are not available
516 in overview mode.
517 click&drag with RMB (right mouse button) in zoom mode
519 Move the visible part of the page in zoom mode.
520 Cursor keys in overview mode
522 Navigate through pages.
523 Alt+Tab keys
525 Leaves fullscreen mode to facilitate task switching while run‐
526 ning full-screen presentations.
527 Any other alphanumeric (A-z, 0-9) or function key (F1-F12) can be used
529 to assign shortcuts to pages that require quick access. If one of the
530 keys is pressed together with Shift, the currently displayed page is
531 associated with this key. To recall the page later, it is sufficient to
532 press the shortcut key again. Shortcuts can be permanently stored with
533 the S key.
534
536 Impressive offers a powerful way to customize individual presentations
537 using so-called info scripts. An info script is a text file having the
538 same name and located in the same directory as the presentation file
539 itself, except for the additional suffix .info. Thus, a presentation
540 file called BrandNewProduct.pdf would have a info script with the name
541 BrandNewProduct.pdf.info. If multiple arguments were specified on the
542 command line, the info script will be called just .info (a dot file, so
543 to speak). If a directory name was specified as the only argument,
544 either a file called DirectoryName.info or a file called .info inside
545 the directory will be used, depending on whether a path separator was
546 specified at the end of the directory name or not - Impressive simply
547 appends .info to whatever the input path name was.
548 In any case, the default file name can be overridden by the -I command
549 line option.
550 Info scripts are actually Python scripts with full access to Impres‐
552 sive's global data structures and functions. (It is possible to write
553 real interactive applications using info scripts.) Thus, they can mod‐
554 ify a broad range of settings concerning Impressive. This manual will
555 only cover the most basic ones.
556 PAGE PROPERTIES
558 The main part of an info script defines the properties of each page. At
559 the moment, the following properties are defined:
560 title
562 Each page can have a title that is displayed in the Impressive
563 window's title bar. If there is no title explicitly specified in
564 the info script, the title of the page will be extracted from
565 PDF metadata if pdftk is installed, or the image file name will
566 be used if the presentation is an image slideshow.
567 transition
569 With this property, the transition class to be used for render‐
570 ing the transition between this page and the following page can
571 be specified. For pages lacking this property, random transi‐
572 tions will be chosen. A list of available transition classes can
573 be obtained with impressive -l.
574 transtime
576 This property overrides the global transition time parameter (-T
577 at the command line). It contains the integer time (in millisec‐
578 onds) the transition between this page and the following page
579 shall be shown.
580 overview
582 This property holds a boolean value (0/False or 1/True) that
583 specifies whether the page shall be included in the overview
584 page. If this property isn't specified, it is assumed to be
585 True.
586 skip
588 This boolean property can be set to 1/True if the page shall be
589 skipped during the presentation.
590 Pages with overview:True, skip:False will be accessible both by
591 cycling through the pages and using the overview page,
592 pages with overview:True, skip:True will be silently skipped in
593 the normal page cycle, but remain accessible from the overview
594 page,
595 pages with overview:False, skip:False will appear in the normal
596 cycle, but not on the overview page
597 and pages with overview:False, skip:True will not be accessible
598 at all.
599 boxes
601 This property stores a list of highlight box coordinates. Nor‐
602 mally, there is no need to edit this by hand, as Impressive han‐
603 dles this automatically if the S key is pressed.
604 timeout
606 If a timeout property is present and the page is shown, Impres‐
607 sive will automatically switch to the next page after the speci‐
608 fied number of milliseconds. Normally, the timeout will only be
609 effective the first time the page is shown unless wrap mode is
610 used (command-line option -w or --wrap). This restriction makes
611 it possible to create self-running presentations with individual
612 per-page timeouts.
613 comment
615 This property can hold a string with a single line of text that
616 will be displayed on screen while the page is shown. Display of
617 this text can not be disabled.
618 sound
620 Specifies the file name of a sound file to be played (via
621 MPlayer) when the page is first entered. Once started, the sound
622 will be played until its end is reached, another sound or video
623 is played, or Impressive is exited.
624 video
626 Specifies the file name of a video file to be played when the
627 page is first entered. The video will be displayed full-screen.
628 Any key or mouse click stops playback, except the cursor keys,
629 which are used to seek in the video file, and space, which can
630 be used to pause playback. Note that this function is highly
631 experimental and might not work reliably on every system!
632 always
634 If this property is present and set to 1 or True, the media file
635 specified in the sound or video properties will be played every
636 time the page is entered, not just the first time.
637 progress
639 If this property is set to zero, the presentation progress bar
640 (which is usually set up with the -d/--duration command line
641 switch) will not be shown on this page. In practice, it might be
642 useful to hide the bar from the first page so that it is not
643 visible during the introduction.
644 reset
646 If this property is set to 1 or True, the timer will be reset
647 each time this page is left, just as if the R has been pressed.
648 If the special value 2 or FirstTimeOnly is used, the reset will
649 only take place if the page was shown for the first time. Again,
650 this is particularly useful on the first page: A combination of
651 progress:False, reset:FirstTimeOnly makes it possible to set up
652 the presentation long before it actually begins - the first page
653 can be showed as long as desired, actual timing starts at the
654 second page.
655 rotate
657 This property is a per-page override of the global -r command
658 line option: It specifies how the page shall be rotated, in
659 90-degree steps clockwise.
660 OnEnter, OnLeave, OnEnterOnce, OnLeaveOnce
662 These properties can contain a Python callable (i.e. a function
663 reference or lambda expression) that is executed when the page
664 is entered or left. The ~Once variants will only be executed
665 when the page is entered or left for the first time. The
666 callable must not take any arguments. This feature can be used
667 to associate arbitrary Python code with specific pages, for
668 example to execute external programs.
669 Warning: Lambda expressions cannot be properly processed by the
670 Info Script save function (S key). If Impressive encounters
671 lambda expressions when saving, it will remove them. In addi‐
672 tion, it will not overwrite the original info script, but gener‐
673 ate an extra file that needs to be merged withe the original
674 script by hand.
675 keys
677 This property can be assigned a dictionary that maps alphanumer‐
678 ical keys to Python functions. For example, 'keys': { 'x': Some‐
679 Function } will invoke SomeFunction() if the lowercase character
680 'x' is typed while the page is displayed. Regarding the func‐
681 tions, the same restrictions as for the OnEnter/OnLeave family
682 apply: the function must not take any parameters and lambda
683 functions can not be saved. Also note that it is not possible to
684 overwrite Impressive's pre-defined key bindings with this
685 method.
686 The properties are stored together in a Python dictionary called Page‐
688 Props. The syntax looks like in this example:
689 PageProps = {
691 1: {
692 'title': "Title Page",
693 'transition': PagePeel,
694 'sound': "background_music.mp3"
695 },
696 2: {
697 'title': "Another Page",
698 'timeout': 5000
699 }
700 }
701 The PageProps definition (and only the PageProps definition) will be
703 rewritten by Impressive if the S key is pressed. User-defined PageProps
704 entries will also be left untouched, except for some pretty-printing.
705 GLOBAL PRESENTATION PROPERTIES
707 The name of the presentation is shown in the title bar of the Impres‐
708 sive window (if not in fullscreen mode). By default, the file name or
709 (if available) PDF metadata title will be used for this purpose, but
710 the presentation title can also be explicitly set by overwriting the
711 DocumentTitle variable:
712 DocumentTitle = "My Presentation"
713 Another useful variable, AvailableTransitions, contains a list of all
715 transition classes that may be used for randomly assigning transitions
716 to pages lacking the transition property. Thus, if you want to exclude
717 a certain transition (either because you don't like it or because you
718 want to have it exclusively on pages where you manually assigned it
719 using PageProps), you can write something like
720 AvailableTransitions.remove(WipeBlobs)
721 On the other side, it's possible to activate transitions that are not
722 enabled by default:
723 AvailableTransitions += [SlideUp, SlideDown]
724 Alternatively, you can completely overwrite AvailableTransitions to
725 have the same transition (or set of transitions) assigned to all pages:
726 AvailableTransitions = [Crossfade]
727 OPTION OVERRIDES
729 Another use of info scripts is overriding the default or command-line
730 settings on a per-file basis. This can be done by simply overwriting
731 one of the variables that are defined at the beginning of impres‐
732 sive.py. Each of these variables corresponds either to a command-line
733 setting, or to some constant related to visual appearance or perfor‐
734 mance. So, for example, to force fullscreen mode for a presentation,
735 write
736 Fullscreen = True
737
739 Impressive and its documentation has been written mainly by Martin J.
740 Fiedler <martin.fiedler@gmx.net>, with small portions of the code writ‐
741 ten by external contributors. See the source code file for details.
742
744 Report bugs to to <martin.fiedler@gmx.net>.
745Martin J. Fiedler 2010-10-17 IMPRESSIVE(1)