So pdfpc on github (which is a forked and improved version of the pdf-presenter-console) is the closest thing I found.
Features
It has all the features I looked for. Regular slides on the projector, view of the next slide and the current one on the laptop. It pre-caches the slides for fast switch and can provide an overview with thumbnails for each slide (quick selection). It also plays videos. With the n one can edit notes that are stored in a text file in the same directory as the PDF, or it can show beamer slides on the side screen.
Usage
To use, one has to invoke pdfpc with a PDF file like this in terminal:
pdfpc presentation.pdf
Of course one can add it to the list of applications to open PDF's with in your file-manager to make it easier. There are command line options to interchange screens, set the timer, and have it count down instead of up.
The rest is straight forward and documented in the man pages. Ubuntu man-pages are outdated, so one should consult the man pages on the site. I made a request for importing LaTeX-Beamer notes.
The latest version (4.0 and up) supports LaTeX-Beamer notes. Just use --notes={left,right,top,bottom}
to match the setting in your "beamer" document:
\usepackage{pgfpages}
\setbeameroption{show notes}
\setbeameroption{show notes on second screen=right}
With the above, you would use --notes=right
.
Installation / Compilation
For Windows PCs it might be a pain in the rear to compile, since the requirements state:
- Vala Compiler Version >=0.11.0
- Gnu compiler collection
- CMake Version >=2.6
- Gtk+ 2.x
- libPoppler with glib bindings
Which is a handful to install and get running. For Ubuntu, other Debian distros and Arch, it's a piece of cake as there are packages in the repositories.
Best Answer
The default page size in a
beamer
presentation is 12.8cm x 9.6cm (a 4:3 aspect ratio) with a font size of11pt
. The page size is set usinggeometry
using the following additional default settings:In the above,
\beamer@paperwidth
and\beamer@paperheight
is set based on the required aspect ratio. Also as mentioned in comments above, the values ofhead
andfoot
may change, depending on the requirements provided by the template/theme used. Using these default settings, you can create your own slides in thearticle
document class using:The basic idea behind keeping a small page size is to minimize (or "lessen") the amount of content on each slide, since viewers are not supposed to read manuscripts on the each frame.
For different aspect ratios, here are the other
beamer
defaults, declared using the keyaspectratio
: