Dual-Screen PDF Viewer

This website aims to provide some documentation for the dspdfviewer project. Its main purpose is to decouple installation instructions from the primary sourcecode tree. You can inspect the sourcecode on github.

It is a work-in-progress, and accepting suggestions and help. Read further down on how to get involved.

What is dspdfviewer?

dspdfviewer is a pre-rendering and caching (read: fast) full-screen pdf viewer specifically designed for latex-beamer presentations, that were created with the show notes on second screen=right option.

It will take your double-width PDF file, split it in half, render the left half to the audience (via a beamer) and the right half - which will contain the notes you entered in your LaTeX source - on your laptop screen.

In addition, your laptop screen will contain some counters and a wall-clock, which may help you time your presentation right.

Both screens will be rendered and scaled completely independent of each other, so you can use two screens with different resolutions and/or aspect ratios, such as your 16:10 laptop screen and a 4:3 beamer, or the other way around. Please use both devices’ native resolutions for maximum image quality.

How do I use it?

First of all: You should have a pdf generated by latex-beamer with the show notes on second screen=right option. While you can leave the =right part out (is the default if not specified) dspdfviewer will not work correctly if you specify any other direction; It always assumes the left half is for the audience and the right half is for the presenter.

Simply call dspdfviewer /path/to/your/presentation.pdf to start. If you start dspdfviewer without a command-line parameter, it will use a file-open-dialog-window to ask you for a PDF file.

Once its loaded, try the following commands:

• Swap Screens (If the audience sees the clock and the note page)
  • Keyboard: S, F12
• Advance one frame
  • Mouse: Left-Click, Wheel-Down
  • Keyboard: Right, Down
• Back one frame
  • Mouse: Right-Click, Wheel-Up
  • Keyboard: Left, Up
• Keybindings popup
  • Keyboard: F1 or ?
• Quit program
  • Keyboard: Q

For a more complete list, please read the program’s manual page. With dspdfviewer installed, a manual page corresponding to your installed version should be available as man dspdfviewer.

In addition, you can access the manpage online. Note that the online version is generated from git and may contain commands not yet in your installation. You can also read the release manpage from version v1.14.

If the manual doesn’t answer your question, feel free to open a ticket in the issues system requesting help or clarification.

How do I install it?

This varies depending on your operating system. Please follow the specific instructions:

• Linux and other Unixes
  • Debian
  • Ubuntu
  • Gentoo
  • Arch
  • Generic (from source)
  • Mac OS
• Windows

If your system isn’t listed here, please try the Generic instructions. Feel free to open a ticket in the issues system asking for help if something goes wrong.

How do I contribute?

First, you help a lot if you use the software and report any problems or missing features in the issues system.

If you want to help on development, please use github’s amazing pull request feature.

The full sourcecode, which includes this website, is available to view and improve, and any help is greatly appreciated!

Who built this program?

Github maintains a contributors list for the sourcecode.

Contact information

If you have any questions that don’t fit the issues system, you can contact me (@dannyedel) by e-mail at mail@danny-edel.de.

Since e-mails on the internet are everything but secure, please use my gpg key to send encrypted.