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ctive-DVI
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Active-DVI is a DVI previewer and a
programmable presenter for slides written in LaTeX.
Description |
Manual |
Frequently asked questions
Requirements for installation |
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To preview DVI files, Active-DVI features:
- Color anti-aliasing.
- Inclusion of images (via the Camlimages package) with alpha
channel and blending.
- Encapsulated Postscript File inclusion (using graphics macros package).
- Gpic specials to display pictures.
- Correct treatment of many (but not all) inlined-Postscript specials.
- Page background settings.
- Japanese pTeX DVI extension support
(screen shot).
To present your DVI files, Active-DVI features:
- Basic effects for presentation (pause, delay, dynamic text color change).
- Annotations displayed on demand (similar to pop-up balloons).
- Hyper links from slide to slide or to other files (including DVI files).
- Replay of previously recorded parts of the display.
- Text movements.
- Page transitions.
- Embedded applications (launched and killed on demand from within.
the presentation text source).
- Scratching on slide to interactively modify the text on screen.
Active-DVI special effects are set and launched from within your
LaTeX source file via the macros of the advi.sty
LaTeX package provided by the distribution.
In addition, Caml hackers can program new and fancy Active-DVI effects in the
source code of the presenter.
The Active-DVI user's manual is available here.
- How to get a full-screen presentation ?
- Answer: Just launch Active-DVI and type
^F
(control-F) in the Active-DVI window.
- How to revert from full-screen to normal size ?
- Answer: Just type
^F (control-F) again in the
Active-DVI window!
- How to center the slide when full-screen mode is active ?
- Answer: Just use the mouse to move the bounding box of the
slide: pressing control key and the left button draws the bounding box, then
if you continue pressing the key and button you can drag the bounding
box where you want to.
- How to get online help for Active-DVI keys ?
- Answer: Just press
? in the Active-DVI window.
- How to get examples of talks ?
- Answer: Look in the distribution, sub-directory
examples. The sub-directories are
basics (from simple to moderately advanced style effects)
prosper (two presentations in directories LL,
and Join), and seminar (one example).
You may also consider the sub-directory
test of the source main directory and look at the
various *.tex files. Just typemake in any of those
sub-directories to build the corresponding DVI presentations.
- How to ensure safety, since unknown applications can be launched
from the DVI file that I am previewing ?
- Answer: Active-DVI's default behavior is not to automatically
launch embedded applications: when a presentation attempt to launch an
application, the presentation is stopped and a dialog box appear to
tell you the name of the application and ask you for confirmation
before launching.
- How do I know in advance the set of applications that a
DVI file can launch ?
- Answer: Just launch Active-DVI the
-n option.
advi -n file.dvi will analyse the file file.dvi
and print out the list of embedded commands it contains.
- How to print my slides for real on paper or slides for
a retro-projector ?
- Answer: Easy. Just use the
ignore option of the
advi.sty package, it is especially devoted to that task!
Write usepackage[ignore]{advi} in the header of the document,
then use LaTeX to recompile your source file: the Active-DVI package
will suppress the effects that cannot be rendered and render the effects that
it knows how to emulate via postscript.
- Additional answer: Impossible. How could you ever believe that
somebody or something could render on a mere sheet of paper all those
text dancing movements and those fancy, fascinating, and creative
effects that your presentation features ? No hope: you really need
Active-DVI to play your talk!
- Additional2 (preventive) answer: The additional
answer which immediately precedes this one is a joke; in fact, the
truth is: we worked hard such that the
ignore option of
advi.sty does a good job; however, it is clear that the
Active-DVI style can just do its best to perform a task that
cannot be done perfectly.
- How do I write on my slide during the presentation ?
- Answer: Just type
s to write text and
S to draw lines.
- How to write on my slides some programs that have colored
parts ?
- Answer: Just use the environment
alltt; then colors
(and other text annotations and typographic indications) are available
within a type-writter font setting. For instance:
\begin{alltt}
{\it{(* Remark that double semi-colon is mandatory here. *)}}
let x = 1\textcolor{red}{;;}
let r = \{foo = 1; bar = "toto"\};;
\textcolor[named]{Red}{let} z = r.foo;;
\end{alltt}
- How to write on my slides programs which have mathematical
formulas in them ?
- Answer: If you need mathematical formulas into your programs,
use the environment
alltt and insert the formulas into fancy
parens \( and \).
- How to visualize Adobe PostScript fonts like
ptmr8t using Active-DVI ?
- Answer: You cannot! Active-DVI can display only PK based fonts
whose sources are provided in
.mf files. Adobe fonts
having no .mf source files, hence METAFONT cannot create
the corresponding .pk files for Active-DVI.
- The workaround is to use an equivalent of the problematic font
in the Computer-Modern font set, that has been designed by Donald Knuth
to be the default fonts for TeX.
- How to solve the margin problems of Active-DVI (margins
are wrong with
advi while xdvi works
perfect) ?
- Answer:
xdvi and advi do not use the
same margins. Advi uses the specification that TeX emits
into the DVI file (bounding box) and does not add extra space for
margins. Unfortunately, many LaTeX
styles and packages do not give a relevant value to the bounding box.
- The workaround is to modify margins, either by moving the
bounding-box around with the mouse (Control+button), or to use the
relevant option on the command line when launching
advi
(the -vmargin and -hmargin options).
Installation of Active-DVI
You need Objective Caml 3.04 or higher to compile the sources.
You also need the `kpsewhich' utility of the `kpathsea' library
provided by the TeX distributions.
Source distribution
- Simple installation.
- ADK
- the Active-DVI Development Kit. The complete and functionnal set
of Active-DVI's source files and Caml libraries that it uses (camltk
et camlimages).
- Advanced installation
- Note:
- For the maximum performance, Active-DVI requires the
camltk and
camlimages libraries.
If you have not yet installed these libraries, we recommend to
download the ADK (it is a big tar ball of Active-DVI, camltk and
camlimages, with a fully-automated-with-luck installation Makefile).
- For hackers only
- the Active-DVI source
version only (You should already have camltk and camlimages installed!)
- For impatient hackers only
-
The current CVS version of Active-DVI is available at the
Caml Anonymous CVS repository.
Binary distribution: RPMS
If you find a bug drop a message to advi-bugs@pauillac.inria.fr.
If you want to get in touch with the implementors (to contribute
some new ideas or lines of code) write to advi@pauillac.inria.fr.
If you want to subscribe to the Active-DVI mailing list, write to
advi-list-request@pauillac.inria.fr.
Jun Furuse,
Pierre Weis,
Didier Rémy,
Xavier Leroy,
Didier Le Botlan,
Alan Schmitt,
Roberto Di Cosmo,
Alexandre Miquel
Acknowledgement
Active-DVI's graphical engine to display DVI files is based on
Mldvi version 1.0, written by Alexandre Miquel.
Active-DVI is entirely written in Objective Caml.
This program is distributed under the GNU LGPL. See the enclosed file COPYING.
Last modified:
Copyright
© 2001, 2002 INRIA all rights reserved.
Contact the author Pierre.Weis@inria.fr
