Using Linux for Presentations Mini-HOWTO

Contents

• Introduction and Motivation
• Contributors
• Software for Creating and Presenting Slides
• Tips and Tools for HTML presentations with mozilla
• Tips and Tools for PDF presentations
• The Moment of Truth: Connecting to the Projector
• Remote Presentation Devices
• Some Conclusions (opinions)
• Other Resources
  

Introduction and Motivation

Contributors:

Software for Creating and Presenting Slides

There are plenty of software packages which can do a good job of presenting slides.

There are three major categories:

Dedicated presentation programs are programs designed to present slides. They usually have their own language for describing slides, and some of them include editing tools to help you design and edit your slides. The main advantage of this approach are that you're using a tool designed for the job.

Browser/HTML based solutions use HTML as the language for describing slides. To display them, you use a web browser, such as Firefox, usually in fullscreen mode. You can write the HTML by hand, use an HTML editor, or use a special tool aimed at creating HTML presentations. Advantages of this approach include portability, flexibility and ease of showing your slides on the web, and you can do equations with some difficulty (using MathML). Disadvantages mainly involve difficulties in styling HTML, and browser portability issues. The author prefers HTML for her own presentations; there are some tips for HTML presentations later in this document.

PDF based solutions use PDF as the slide language. Most people who use PDF slides seem to use acroread as their presentation tool, but evince and others also work. Advantage: it's portable, and in a pinch you can always find a machine that can display PDF at least to some extent. Disadvantage: neither the viewers nor the creation tools are usually very flexible, and multimedia (like animations or effects) aren't an option.

Presentation tool roundup:

• Dedicated presentation programs
• Browser/HTML based solutions
• PDF based solutions
• Other solutions

Tips and Tools for HTML Presentations with Mozilla:

• Mozilla 1.1 and later has a fullscreen mode: press F11 to toggle in and out.  You still need to maximize the window; and you'll still see a titlebar and your windowmanager's panel, if any. You can turn them off with View->Toolbars->Navigation Controls
• Make a separate mozilla profile to use for giving presentations, so you can hide the urlbar and so forth without affecting your normal mozilla environment. Then you can add an entry to your panel or menu system to call: mozilla -P presenter (subtitute your profile name).
• Alternately, you can make the urlbar disappear automatically when you switch to fullscreen mode with this addition to user.js:

  In Firefox:

  #toolbar-menubar[moz-collapsed=true] + #nav-bar { display: none !important; }
  

  In Seamonkey:

  #main-menubar[moz-collapsed=true] + #nav-bar { display: none !important; }
  

• Some ways to advance to the next slide with a one-key command:
• Easy way (requires no fancy html or javascript): go through all the pages in order before the presentation, then go back to the first one and use alt-rightarrow to advance.
  
• CSS to make your presentation all one document, one slide per page (then use spacebar and page up/down keys to move around).  Disadvantage: shows a scrollbar.
• Use page accesskeys and light javascript, then you can move around with keys like alt-N and alt-P, as in this Bugzilla Fosdem talk by Gervase Markham.  Note, this may not work well if you rebind your mozilla accel key.
  
• Use heavier javascript, so you can trap keys like spacebar, forward and back arrows, and page up/down. You can do this with your slides all in separate HTML files, like in this example by the author; or you can put them all in one big file, as with this Bitflux Fosdem Talk or with Meyer Web's S5.
• If you're dying for effects like bullets scrolling in from the side, that's easily done with Javascript.  More complicated animations are probably best done in mng or animated gif (create with gimp, image magick or gifsicle).  There are supposedly free flash creation tools, but I've never figured them out myself.
• A useful collection of slides from presentations using mozilla can be found at the eu.mozdev.org fosdem site.
  

Tips and Tools for PDF presentations:

• LaTex has tools for producing slides, which can be converted to PS,  PDF or HTML.  See this latex2pdf page for some suggestions, and here's a tutorial for making slides in latex.
  
• You can produce PDF slides with packages such as Seminar, Prosper, foiltex, or SliTeX, or using XML combined with a system like AxPoint or ReportLab's PythonPoint).
• pspresent is a tool for presenting postscript slides.
  
• Here's a good tutorial for Prosper, with some simple example slides.  Reading the examples that come with Prosper are also helpful.
  

The Moment of Truth: Connecting to the Projector

    Option "Display" "BIOS"

Remote Presenter Devices

No problem. Most of them are implemented as generic USB keyboard devices and will work just fine with Linux.

The trick is that they don't all send the same key sequences: some send Page Up/Down, some send up/down arrow, some apparently look like a mouse and send right/left mouse clicks. So you may need to check your presentation tool: if you're using PDF or scroll-down CSS, you may want to look for one which sends Page Up/Down. If you're using OpenOffice, it probably follows the normal PowerPoint conventions and will work with most tools. If you're using HTML and JavaScript, then you can use anything as long as you make sure your JS obeys the right keys.

Some Conclusions (warning, personal opinion)

• For my own presentations, I prefer using HTML and Firefox. I already have the tools, I already know html, and I like being able to put the presentation on the web without doing any extra work.
• People used to powerpoint and gui tools might be happiest with KPresenter -- the UI is a bit rough but it is flexible and wysiwyg -- though OpenOffice is gaining a lot of fans.
• People who already work with latex and pdf will probably prefer that format for presentations.
  
• MagicPoint looks the best when presenting (it's the only one that takes over the whole screen, including taskbar).
• People who need to be compatible with powerpoint (perhaps because it's required at the company where the presentation will be made, because they can use the standard company templates, or when writing a presentation for a windows user) will probably prefer Open/Star Office or Applixware.
  

Other resources

• From PowerPoint to MagicPoint, a tutorial on MagicPoint.
  
• The Presentation HOWTO is a useful guide to organizing content for a presentation to LUGs and conferences.
• ThinkQuest: Reading Great Speeches, Making Great Speeches
• It's the Story, Stupid: Don't let Presentation Software Keep You From GettingYour Story Across
• Presentation Boot Camp (or "Keeping the hecklers at bay")