Slashdot Log In
How Do You Share Presentations Under Linux?
Posted by
Cliff
on Sun Sep 17, 2006 06:41 PM
from the on-the-same-page-in-different-locations dept.
from the on-the-same-page-in-different-locations dept.
Dr_Hajj asks: "I don't like giving presentations. I do my best to avoid having to. Unfortunately, I've been unable to dodge the latest request to give a little talk. This talk is to be presented to folks at several remote locations so there's a need for some sharing technology. How do Linux desktop users out there share presentations with others on the net?"
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
S5 (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Or Slidy... (Score:2)
.odp (Score:3, Informative)
OpenOffice.org (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
PDF (Score:2, Insightful)
PDF (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:PDF using Evince (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
2) Beamer is for creating PDFs in a slideshow format (which it does well).
Just thought you should know.
Re: (Score:2)
Anyway's, I agree that PDF files are the way to go for presentation distributing. I personally like DVI for that purpose better, but most windoze users wouldn't know what to do with a DVI file, and AFAIK, Evince (& perhaps okular?) is the only
Re:PDF using Evince (Score:4, Informative)
Poppler is getting better, but it's not quite there yet. Xpdf may be fugly as hell (it's a motif/lesstif app), but there really isn't any replacement for it yet.
Bingo. Poppler, a rendering library developed as an off-shoot of xpdf, somehow manages to perform worse than the original.
Case in point:
To add insult to injury, there are some rare cases when the on-screen render and printout of an image are different. A mangled image may print properly, but also a properly shown image may be printed as a black box.
The absolutely worst part is that if you print directly from LyX, the printing and rendering routines usually go through poppler. And what does that do to your images? Yep, well guessed. Effecfively the only way to print PDF's in a way that ensures their final outcome is to use xpdf. For LyX documents, this involves the extra step of exporting to PDF and printing from an external program.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
How about KPDF [kde.org]? Based on the xpdf engine, integrates nicely with KDE, more compatible than Acrobat Reader 7 in my experience (either that, or my students use really weird PDF generators).
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:PDF (Score:5, Informative)
No, it doesn't move, you can't do animation at all, nor any cool transition. But I personaly think it's a plus side.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
In this case, if all the parties know LaTeX, then nothing could be better than using Beamer [sourceforge.net]. Thrown in a CVS repository too, and you have the perfect collaboration system.
Re: (Score:2)
That's incorrect. Transitions in PDF have been around for years. Additionally, you can perform all sorts of fun javascript/multimedia stuff.
PDF Transitions Made Easy [planetpdf.com]
With judicious use, transitions can be effective.
Re: (Score:2)
I haven't used it myself, but Alexander Grahn's movie15 package [tug.org] purports to embed animations into LaTeX PDF documents.
Re: (Score:2)
I've found that in most cases, the quality of the information presented is inversely proportional to the degree of flashiness of the presentation. It's sort of a "Those who can do, those who cannot produce pretty power point slides" thing.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
PDF presenters do not auto-load the next slide....this leads to an uncomfortable silence between the time you try to advance the slide, and the time the slide actually advances. This effect depends on how complicated the next slide is.
PDF cannot embed audio/video, so if you want a multimedia presentation you are screwed.
You cannot draw onto a slide to explain your point.
I've used MagicPoint [wide.ad.jp], which works fine. You make each slide into a standalone graphics file, like a JPEG or GIF or PDF. Then, y
Re: (Score:2)
That's true, but I have never seen any slide show where this would be a problem, and I have seen some pretty complicated slides.
PDF cannot embed audio/video, so if you want a multimedia presentation you are screwed.
Wrong. PDF can embed audio/video just fine. The only problem
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I have, on slides with large images, either when loading directly from a CD, or on the less-than-cutting-edge machine that happens to be connected to the projector.
PDF good for classrooms (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
At the XP machine I use at work, I just disable the plugin, and download the file. That way, when I open it, it doesn't mess with firefox at all. On lin
Presentation (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I take it you haven't tried that on a 64-bit system running a native 64-bit browser. People have been asking for a 64-bit version of Falsh Player since the Athlon 64 came out (~3 years) and still no dice.
UltraVNC Java viewer. (Score:4, Interesting)
For just plain presentations where the remote people see your desktop and you use the telephone for audio this setup works about as well as GoToMeeting does. If you don't have the ability to host your own conference calls, there are several free conference call companies out there, just search google for "free conference call".
Re: (Score:2)
I've been contemplating doing something similar, except I expected to use TightVNC, since I'd never heard of UltraVNC's java viewer before. Many thanks for the suggestion.
Only problem is that the presentations are often hosted on a laptop connected to some random NAT wireless access point that I don't control. I've been meaning to put together something so that presenters can seamlessly ssh-tunnel to one of our servers to which the vnc clients can then connect, but haven't had a chance yet. H
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Even better would be some way to add audio to the UltraVNC protocol. Sounds like a potentially fun project.
JXTA-Remote-Desktop (Score:2)
PDF or S5 and CVS (Score:2)
We also have experimented with filming our presentations and then uploading them to Google Video or sharing them as a flash movie. This works well for our purposes, but is not optimal for live sharing of video.
Missing the point? (Score:3, Insightful)
At my organization's recent annual meeting, we had several sites on two different continents. PowerPoint (I know, yuck) presentations were shared between locations with GoToMeeting. The presenter moved to the next slide, and all the remote sites updated automatically, in almost real time.
Can *that* be done with Linux?
(The Java JXTA mentioned above is the only response so far that may be an answer.)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
PresenterNet (Score:2)
PresenterNet looks to be about as cross-platform as they come, aat least from the end user's perspective. Not so much for the initial creation of the presentation. You need to have a presentation initially in Powerpoint format, which then gets converted to Flash during the upload process. Once uploaded, the presenter controls the sequence and speed
LaTeX Beamer to create PDF presentations (Score:5, Informative)
I realize that other people have already suggested using PDF but I didn't see any references to Beamer yet. I think Beamer is the best tool for making presentations regardless of platform. I also happen to think that LaTeX is the best tool by far for creating books, articles, and written works in general.
I do this for a living (Score:5, Informative)
Next you might want to consider H323 conferencing... gnomemeeting, netmeeting, and the like. In addition to voice and webcams, they should give you desktop sharing, text chat, and a whiteboard and crap. (Under Windows XP, netmeeting is hidden but still available via "Run | conf.exe")
If you have a high-end corporate conference room setup (with a Tandberg or Polycom VTC unit) that would make things much simpler in that you could simply plug your laptop into the VGA input. This could also get you better than POTS audio quality (8kHz mono). Very few conference rooms I've seen have bothered to set this up, though. Anyway, since they all speak H323, anyone with gnomemeeting or netmeeting should be able to join and watch and listen (albeit maybe at a lower quality, always test first
http://webex.com/ [webex.com] is another option, though I haven't played with their linux client yet. It can be a real dog with desktop updates (advancing a slide can take several seconds to update at all of the clients). However if you do it the right way and use their PPT preloader & displayer, things should be smooth. Like VNC, you'd want to coordinate desktop resolutions beforehand... it doesn't do any type of scaling.
Finally if you're into building your own thing, you can grab a video capture card such as http://www.unigraf.fi/?page=64 [unigraf.fi] and use Windows Media Encoder, VideoLAN, etc. to deliver video content from any PC source to your clients using streaming video. Lots of testing and tweaking required, but you can basically take any full motion video or 3D content and chuck it over a network in multiple bit rates, have a recording to archive and playback later, etc. And all everyone needs is a media player. Mind that audio is only one-way.
LaTeX, Prosper style and PDF (Score:2)
I also have some scripts that render the presentatio and create a page where all slides are given in sequence as antialiased 100dpi images, although I have sto
Talks at W3C (Score:2)
If you put the talk up on the Web before the conference, you aren't tied to using your own laptop to present, which can be useful if you're sufficiently prepared. I rarely am, sin
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)