[vox] Survey: What do YOU use Linux for?

[Norm Matloff]

On Wed, Jul 06, 2005 at 04:23:17PM -0700, Micah J. Cowan wrote:

> On Wed, Jul 06, 2005 at 03:50:15PM -0700, Norm Matloff wrote:

> > Actually, this is basically what the packages like Prosper do.  They
> > exploit the features of PDF, so as to get the slide transition effects
> > and so on.  And one can play external AVI movies, etc.  I don't know if
> > it is as fancy and easy to use as Powerpoint for the advanced effects,
> > but I can at least say that slide transition effects in Prosper is easy,
> > as I use them all the time.

> > There is a nice example of Prosper at 

> >    http://www.maths.man.ac.uk/~mheil/Prosper/ProsperGraphicsDemo.pdf

> Well, in that case, color me corrected!
 
> Although, the PDF you pointed me at didn't seem to have any slide
> transition effects that I could observe (dl'd the latest acroread, just
> to see). :-(

The transitions are there.  There is apparently some problem with the
interaction of your browser and your Acroread.  A browser can either run
Acroread (or xpdf or whatever) within the browser itself or externally,
in a separate window.  I don't know the details at all (I hope someone
who reads this does), but I suspect your problem is of this sort.

To verify, actually download the PDF file to your local disk, and run
Acroread directly on it.  Or run xpdf.  I do recommend fullscreen mode
(ctrl-L in Acroread, -fullscreen on the command line for xpdf).
 
> With powerpoint presentations, I've seen bullet-points "swoop" in from
> the sides; I'd be really impressed if Prosper lets you do such things. I

I don't think it does.  Prosper defines seven types of transitions.  See
the Prosper tour and docs.  For your convenience, I've placed them in
http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/tmp/prosper/ (they're the two PDF files).

The tour shows some tricks that the tour claims are easier in Prosper
than in Powerpoint.

> wouldn't be suprised, though--even if it doesn't--if other OSS software
> is available that provides those sorts of effects and can generate
> presentations from content descriptions (though I would be a bit
> surprised if they did it using PDF).

There are in fact a number of other OSS packages which work along the
lines of Prosper.  Some of them even work on DVI files instead of PDF.
If you plug "LaTeX slides" into Google, you should find lots.

Norm