NAME¶

Impressive - presentation tool with eye candy

SYNOPSIS¶

impressive [OPTIONS...] FILES...

DESCRIPTION¶

Impressive is a simple presentation program that displays slideshows of PDF documents, image files or video files. Rendering is done via OpenGL, which allows for some "eye candy" effects.

A somewhat-modern GPU (graphics processing unit) supporting OpenGL 2.0 or OpenGL ES 2.0 and appropriate drivers are required to run Impressive.

OPTIONS¶

-a <seconds> or --auto <seconds>

-A <X>:<Y> or --aspect <X>:<Y>

-b or --noback

--background <color>

-bare

--box-edge <pixels>

-B <ms> or --boxfade <ms>

-c <mode> or --cache <mode>

-C <filename>[:<X>,<Y>] or --cursor <filename>[:<X>,<Y>]

--clock

--control-help

-d <time> or --duration <time>

-D <ms> or --mousedelay <ms>

--darkness <percentage>

-e <bindings> or --bind <bindings>

-E <filename> or --controls <filename>

--evtest

-f

--fullscreen

--fake-fullscreen

-F <file> or --font <file>

-g <width>x<height>[+<posX>+<posY>] or --geometry <width>x<height>[+<posX>+<posY>]

-G <gamma>[:<blacklevel>] or --gamma <gamma>[:<blacklevel>]

-h or --help

-H or --half-screen

-i <page> or --initialpage <page>

-I <filename> or --script <filename>

--invert

-k or --auto-progress

-l or --listtrans

-L <spec> or --layout <spec>

--maxzoom <factor>

--min-box-size <pixels>

-M or --minutes

--noblur

-N or --nocursor

--noclicks

--nologo

--nooverview

--noquit

-o <directory> or --output <directory>

-O <mode> or --autooverview <mode>

--overtime <ms>

-p <start>-<end> or --pages <start>-<end>

-P <path> or --gspath <path>

-q or --page-progress

--progress-last <number>

-Q or --autoquit

-r <n> or --rotate <n>

-s or --scale (image input only)

-s or --supersample (PDF input only)

-S <pixels> or --fontsize <pixels>

--spot-radius <pixels>

--time-display

-t <trans1[,trans2...]> or --transition <trans1[,trans2...]>

-T <ms> or --transtime <ms>

--tracking

-u <seconds> or --poll <seconds>

-v or --verbose

-V <pixels> or --overscan <pixels>

-w or --wrap

-W or --nowheel

--windowed

-x or --fade

-X or --shuffle

-y or --auto-auto

--zbox-edge <pixels>

-z <factor> or --zoom <factor>

--zoomdarkness <percentage>

-Z <ms> or --zoomtime <ms>

--cachefile <filename>

ARGUMENTS¶

Following the options, the input file name(s) must be specified. Recognized file types are PDF, image files (JPEG, PNG, TIFF, BMP, PGM/PPM) and video files (AVI, MOV/MP4, MKV/WebM, OGV, MPEG, M2TS, FLV). If the name of a directory is put on the command line, all recognized image files (no PDF files!) in this directory will be played in alphanumeric order (case-insensitive).

In addition, Impressive can use a text file containing a list of files or directories to show: This text file must contain at most one file name per line; every character after a hash sign (#) is treated as a comment and will be ignored. If such a comment is put on the same line as an image file name, it will be used as the page's title. List file names must be prefixed with an at sign (@) on the command line, e.g. impressive @my_list_file.

Impressive will also expand wild-card characters (* and ?) if this isn't already done by the shell, but apart from that, it will not reorder the arguments. Thus, it will show the documents in the order specified at the command line.

If video files are specified on the command line, Impressive generates presentation pages for them just like it does for image files. If FFmpeg or MPlayer are installed, the page will be shown as a screenshot of the first video frame. When entering such a page, the video will be played back if a suitable player (MPlayer, or omxplayer on Raspberry Pi) is installed.

LAYOUT OPTIONS¶

The OSD layout option (-L/--layout) accepts a string with comma-separated key=value pairs. The following keywords are recognized:
alpha

For example, the default OSD layout equals the following option string:
-L margin=16,alpha=1,time=TR,title=BL,page=BR,status=TL

EXAMPLES¶

The following examples illustrate some typical command lines. They assume that Impressive can be run by simply typing "impressive" on the command line. Depending on how Impressive is installed, this has to be substituted with the actual way to run Impressive (e.g. "python ~/impressive/impressive_dev.py" for a fresh SVN checkout). Furthermore, the file "demo.pdf" is used as the document to show here; obviously this has to be replaced by the path to the actual PDF file too.

In the simplest case, Impressive is run directly with the name of the file to show and no further parameters. This will start a full-screen presentation with all settings at their defaults:
impressive demo.pdf

To just quickly check a slide deck, it might make sense to run Impressive in a small window and not full-screen. This can be done with something like
impressive -f -g 800x600 demo.pdf

Impressive can also be used in digital signage scenarios, like displays in shop windows with a permanent slideshow. This can be achieved by having Impressive advance to the next page automatically after a specified time (e.g. 10 seconds) and re-start the presentation from the start after the last slide:
impressive -a 10 -w demo.pdf

USAGE¶

On startup, Impressive will display a black screen with the program logo at the center. If caching is enabled, but background rendering is disabled, all pages of the presentation will then be rendered once. A bar in the lower half of the screen displays the progress of this operation. Any key or mouse click (except for those that quit Impressive, typically Q and Esc) skips this process, with the effect that Impressive will render the remaining pages on demand. Please note that the overview page will not be complete until every page has been rendered at least once. In other words, if the precaching process was skipped, placeholders will be displayed for all pages that have not been rendered yet. By default, Impressive will build up the cache in the background while the presentation runs. Thus, the progress bar will not appear and the preparation will only take the amount of time required to render the first two pages of the presentation. After this initialization process, Impressive will switch to the first page directly and without any transition.

DEFAULT CONTROLS¶

The keyboard and mouse controls used by Impressive are configurable (with very few exceptions). The default controls are as follows:

Esc key

Q key or Alt+F4

LMB (left mouse button), mouse wheel down, Page Down key, Cursor Down key, Cursor Right key or Spacebar

RMB (right mouse button), mouse wheel up, Page Up key, Cursor Up key, Cursor Left key or Backspace key

Home key / End key

Ctrl key (modifier)

L key

F key

Tab key

MMB (middle mouse button)

LMB over a PDF hyperlink

click&drag with LMB (left mouse button)

click&drag with Ctrl+LMB (left mouse button)

RMB (right mouse button) over a highlight box

A key

S key

T key

R key

C key

Return key or Enter key

+ / - key, 9 / 0 key or mouse wheel in spotlight mode

Ctrl+9 or Ctrl+0 keys

7 / 8 key

Ctrl+7 or Ctrl+8 keys

Z key

[ / ] key

{ / } key

\ key

O key

I key

B / W key or . (dot) / , (comma) key

click&drag with MMB (middle mouse button) or RMB (right mouse button) in zoom mode

mouse wheel up / down in zoom mode, U key

Cursor keys in overview mode

Alt+Tab keys

Any alphanumeric (A-z, 0-9) or function key (F1-F12) that is not bound to a specific action mentioned above or configured by the user (see below) can be used to assign shortcuts to pages that require quick access. If one of the keys is pressed together with Shift, the currently displayed page is associated with this key. To recall the page later, it is sufficient to press the shortcut key again. Shortcuts can be stored permanently with the S key.

CONTROL CONFIGURATION¶

As already mentioned in the previous chapter, the keyboard and mouse bindings of Impressive can be widely configured. The only exceptions are the Alt+F4 and Alt+Tab key combinations that will always quit or minimize Impressive, respectively. For everything else, there is a versatile configuration system in place; the controls described in the previous section are merely the defaults.

Impressive's control system works by associating events with actions. An event is a key on the keyboard, a mouse button or a mouse wheel movement. An action is something that is performed by Impressive as a result of an event, like going to the next page, switching to overview mode or quitting the program. The association of an event to an an action is called a binding. Multiple events can be bound to the same action (like the page down and space keys in the default setting, both of which go to the next page); furthermore, multiple actions can be bound to the same event. In fact, bindings do not associate events with single actions at all, but with chains of actions. Only the first action in the chain that matches (i.e. makes sense in) the current context will be executed if the event fires; all other actions will be ignored. If no action matches, no action will be performed and the event will be ignored.

One example of such an action chain is the default binding for the left mouse button, which draws a highlight box if the mouse cursor moved, or visits a hyperlink if the mouse cursor hovers over one, or goes to the next page if none of the other conditions are met.

Both events and actions have mnemonic names that are used in the command-line options and configuration files used for setting up bindings. Event and actions names are generally case-insensitive, though the canonical notation is lowercase.
If an event or action specified on the command line or in a configuration file is not recognized by Impressive, an error message will be written to the console and the offending event or action will be ignored. Errors in control configuration are thus always non-fatal.

SUPPORTED EVENTS¶

Keyboard events are generally named after the keys they refer to. Consequently, the events a to z and 0 to 9 mean the respective letter and number keys on the main keyboard, f1 to f12 are the function keys and kp0 to kp9 are the number keys on the numerical keypad. All of these are raw scancodes, which has two implications: First, the key names are not internationalized and refer to the US keyboard layout (e.g. the Z key on a German or French keyboard will actually react to the event name y or w); second, modifiers will be ignored as well (e.g. the numerical keypad will always generate the kpX scancodes, even if Num Lock is off).

The mnemonic names for the other keyboard events are as follows (in alphabetic order): ampersand, asterisk, at, backquote, backslash, backspace, break, capslock, caret, clear, comma, down, end, escape, euro, exclaim, greater, hash, help, home, insert, kp_divide, kp_enter, kp_equals, kp_minus, kp_multiply, kp_plus, lalt, last, lctrl, left, leftbracket, leftparen, less, lmeta, lshift, lsuper, menu, minus, mode, numlock, pagedown, pageup, pause, period, plus, power, print, question, quote, quotedbl, ralt, rctrl, return, right, rightbracket, rightparen, rmeta, rshift, rsuper, scrollock, semicolon, slash, space, sysreq, tab, underscore, up. The events prefixed with kp_ refer to keys on the numerical keypad. Other than that, the names should be reasonably descriptive, so they will not be described futher at this point. Also note that not all keyboards and platforms support the full range of keys defined in this list.

Mouse event names are mapped as follows:

lmb

mmb

rmb

wheelup

wheeldown

btnX (i.e. btn6, btn7, ...)

The event names can be prefixed with the three modifiers ctrl+, alt+ and shift+ to make the event valid only if the specified set of modifiers is pressed as well. This works for both keyboard and mouse events. Multiple modifiers can be combined, but the order must match the one mentioned in this paragraph. For example, ctrl+shift+x is a valid event name, while shift+ctrl+x is not.

A simple way to determine the name associated with an event is using Impressive's "Event Test Mode" by invoking impressive --evtest. In this mode, the name of each incoming event will be displayed on the screen (and logged to standard output), which makes it possible to determine event names by experimentation.

SUPPORTED ACTIONS¶

The following list describes all actions supported by Impressive, together with the conditions under which they will match. Note that most actions will not match in overview mode and during video playback, unless mentioned otherwise in the description.

auto-start

auto-stop

auto-toggle

box-add

box-clear

box-remove

box-zoom

box-zoom-exit

fade-less, fade-more

fade-reset

fade-to-black, fade-to-white

fullscreen

gamma-decrease, gamma-increase

gamma-bl-decrease, gamma-bl-increase

gamma-reset

goto-end, goto-end-notrans

goto-last, goto-last-notrans

goto-next, goto-next-notrans

goto-prev, goto-prev-notrans

goto-start, goto-start-notrans

hyperlink, hyperlink-notrans

overview-confirm

overview-down, overview-up

overview-enter

overview-exit

overview-next, overview-prev

quit

save

spotlight-enter

spotlight-exit

spotlight-grow, spotlight-shrink

spotlight-reset

time-reset

time-toggle

toggle-overview

toggle-skip

video-pause

video-seek-backward-10, video-seek-backward-1, video-seek-forward-1, video-seek-forward-10

video-step

video-stop

zoom-enter

zoom-exit

zoom-in, zoom-out

zoom-pan

zoom-update

BINDING SYNTAX¶

The arguments of the -e/--bind command-line option have the following basic syntax:
<event> [,<event2>...] <operator> <action> [,<action2>...]
In other words, it is a sequence of event names joined with commas, followed by an operator (see below) and a sequence of action names joined with commas. Multiple such binding statements can be combined into one argument by joining them with a semicolon (;).

The used operator defines in which way the action list shall modify the bindings of the referenced events:

= (equals sign), += (plus sign and equals sign)

:= (colon and equals sign)

-= (minus sign and equals sign)

Other than bindings, a statement can also contain one of the following special commands:

clearall

defaults

include <filename>

The syntax for the configuration files used with the -E/--controls option or include statement is exactly the same as for the ad-hoc configuration option, except that individual bindings can be written on individual lines instead of joining them together to a single long line with semicolons. In addition, everything following a hash sign (#) on a line will be ignored as a comment.

One practical example for such a configuration file can be the following: The author of this program uses a cheap presentation remote control device that has four cursor keys, one "enter" key and a slider that switches between keyboard and mouse mode. Mouse mode works as expected, but what it does in keyboard mode is quite peculiar: the up and down keys act like Page-Up and Page-Down keys on a keyboard, the right arrow key sends the letter B to the computer, and the left key toggles between Esc and F5 each time it's pressed. The following configuration file allows basic navigation and access to overview mode with this device:

      clearall  # don't use the default bindings
      lmb = quit  # quit Impressive by clicking in mouse mode
      # everything else uses keyboard mode:
      return = overview-enter, overview-confirm  # toggle overview mode
      escape, f5 = overview-prev, goto-prev
      b = overview-next, goto-next
      pageup = overview-up, goto-prev
      pagedown = overview-down, goto-next

To get a better idea of how the control configuration system works in practice, it's recommended to study the output of impressive --control-help - this not only gives a concise overview of all events and actions, but also a full dump of Impressive's default bindings that can be used as a starting point for own customizations.

INFO SCRIPTS¶

Impressive offers a powerful way to customize individual presentations using so-called info scripts. An info script is a text file having the same name and located in the same directory as the presentation file itself, except for the additional suffix .info. Thus, a presentation file called BrandNewProduct.pdf would have a info script with the name BrandNewProduct.pdf.info. If multiple arguments were specified on the command line, the info script will be called just .info (a dot file, so to speak). If a directory name was specified as the only argument, either a file called DirectoryName.info or a file called .info inside the directory will be used, depending on whether a path separator was specified at the end of the directory name or not - Impressive simply appends .info to whatever the input path name was.
In any case, the default file name can be overridden by the -I command line option.

Info scripts are actually Python scripts with full access to Impressive's global data structures and functions. (It is possible, though heavily discouraged, to write real interactive applications using info scripts.) This has some good and bad side effects. The bad news first: The info scripts must be compatible with the Python version used by Impressive itself; it's best to write them in a way that's compatible with both Python 2.7 (with the __future__ imports print_function, unicode_literals and division) and Python 3.x. Furthermore, there's no built-in security; in other words: don't trust info scripts you received from somebody else. The good news, however, is that they can modify a broad range of settings concerning Impressive. This manual will only cover the most basic ones.

PAGE PROPERTIES¶

The main part of an info script defines the properties of each page. At the moment, the following properties are defined:

title

transition

transtime

overview

skip

next

prev

boxes

timeout

radius

darkness

zoomdarkness

comment

sound

video

always

progress

reset

rotate

OnEnter, OnLeave, OnEnterOnce, OnLeaveOnce

keys

invert

Note that in Impressive versions prior to 0.11.0, the transition and transtime properties defined the transition from the current page to the next, not from the previous page to the current one.

The properties are stored together in a Python dictionary called PageProps. The syntax looks like in this example:

  PageProps = {
    1: {
         'title': "Title Page",
         'transition': PagePeel,
         'sound': "background_music.mp3"
       },
    2: {
         'title': "Another Page",
         'timeout': 5000
       }
  }

The PageProps definition (and only the PageProps definition) will be rewritten by Impressive if the S key is pressed. User-defined PageProps entries will also be left untouched, except for some pretty-printing.

GLOBAL PRESENTATION PROPERTIES¶

The name of the presentation is shown in the title bar of the Impressive window (if not in fullscreen mode). By default, the file name or (if available) PDF metadata title will be used for this purpose, but the presentation title can also be explicitly set by overwriting the DocumentTitle variable:
DocumentTitle = "My Presentation"

Another useful variable, AvailableTransitions, contains a list of all transition classes that may be used for randomly assigning transitions to pages lacking the transition property. Thus, if a certain transition is undesired (either because of personal dislike or because it shall be used exclusively on pages where it is manually assigned using PageProps), something like the following can be written:
AvailableTransitions.remove(WipeBlobs)
On the other side, it's possible to activate transitions that are not enabled by default:
AvailableTransitions += [SlideUp, SlideDown]
Alternatively, AvailableTransitions can be completely overwritten to have the same transition (or set of transitions) assigned to all pages:
AvailableTransitions = [Crossfade]

OPTION OVERRIDES¶

Another use of info scripts is overriding the default or command-line settings on a per-file basis. This can be done by simply overwriting one of the variables that are defined at the beginning of impressive.py. Each of these variables corresponds either to a command-line setting, or to some constant related to visual appearance or performance. So, for example, to force fullscreen mode for a presentation, write
Fullscreen = True

WORKING DIRECTORIES¶

The working directory while executing the info scripts themselves is always the directory in which the info script is stored in.

The base directory for external actions that originate from Page Properties or PDF hyperlinks is always the directory of the PDF or image file this page belongs to. In other words, if e.g. 'sound': "music.mp3" is written in the info script for one page of presentation.pdf, the file music.mp3 is expected to be located in the same directory as presentation.pdf.

AUTHOR¶

Impressive and its documentation has been written mainly by Martin J. Fiedler <martin.fiedler@gmx.net>, with small portions of the code written by external contributors. See the source code file for details.

REPORTING BUGS¶

Report bugs to to <martin.fiedler@gmx.net>.