adenner/pdf-webslides

Convert PDF presentations to HTML, including presenter mode

PDF Web Slides

This tool allows converting PDF presentation slides to a self-contained HTML5 file. The resulting HTML5 file also contains a presentation mode which mimics the functionality of pdfpc.

Presentation mode (left) with a preview of the next slides and a timer which either counts up or down, and the presentation view (right)

Usage

The first step is to convert a PDF to an HTML5 file. This is simply done by running

pdf-webslides <pdf file>

The output is an index.html file and a corresponding slides.js in the current directory. Note that it is also possible to generate a standalone index.html using the -s option. If the HTML file is opened, it shows the slides in the same way as the original PDF. Slides can simply be navigated using left/right arrow keys, page-up/page-down keys, as well as by swiping over the slides.

Presenter Mode

Presenter mode is a mode where the audience sees the slides, while the presenter sees the current and next slide, a timer, and speaker notes. The presenter mode of PDF Web Slides mimics the presenter mode of pdfpc.

Starting Presenter Mode

To start the slides in presenter mode, there are two possibilities. First, the presenter mode can be set as the default mode at conversion time by providing the -p option, i.e.,

pdf-webslides -p <pdf file>

However, even if the presenter mode was not set as the default mode, it can be activated by pressing the P key. Alternatively, appending ?presenter=1 to the URL opens the slides in presenter mode.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Key	Description
Right / Page Down / Swipe Right to Left	Go to next slide
Left / Page Up / Swipe Left to Right	Go to previous slide
Home	Go to first slide
End	Go to last slide
g	Input slide number to go to
+	Increase note size
-	Decrease note size
b	Turn on/off presentation view, i.e., display an entirely black screen
f	Freeze/unfreeze presentation view. Any change in the presenter mode is not shown on the presentation view
r	Reset timer
p	Display/hide a pointer (i.e., a virtual laser pointer)

Notes

The tool supports the same type of notes as pdfpc. Hence, they can also be directly embedded in LaTeX beamer. With the following macro

\newcommand<>{\pnote}[1]{\only#2{\tikz[remember picture,overlay]{\node{\pdfmargincomment[opacity=0]{#1}}}}}

notes can be added to a certain animation-step of a slide by adding something like

\pnote<1>{Speaker note for step 1 of the current slide.}

If there are notes in the PDF, they are shown below the preview of the next slide.

Videos

PDF Web Slides has a rudimentary support for videos. Videos can be used in the same way as with pdfpc, e.g., using pdfpc-commands.sty. Note that videos are not embedded into the HTML file, they have to be in the same folder.

Installation

Pre-built Binaries (Linux and Windows)

The folder dist contains pre-built versions of the tool. For Linux, it contains a Debian package, for Windows a ZIP file containing the binary and the required DLLs.

PPA (Linux)

First, add the public key of the PPA and the PPA URL to the package manager, and update the package manager

curl -s "https://misc0110.github.io/ppa/KEY.gpg" | sudo apt-key add -
sudo curl -s -o /etc/apt/sources.list.d/misc0110.list "https://misc0110.github.io/ppa/file.list"
sudo apt update

Then, simply install the tool

sudo apt install pdf-webslides

From Source

Linux

The tool depends on Poppler and Cairo for converting the PDF to SVGs. On Ubuntu, the dependencies can be installed through

apt install libcairo2-dev libpoppler-glib-dev

Then, the tool can be built by running

make

and

make install

to install the tool as pdf-webslides.

Windows

On Windows, the tool can be built using MSYS2. First, install the required libraries and tools

pacman -S gcc make mingw64/mingw-w64-x86_64-cairo mingw64/mingw-w64-x86_64-pkg-config mingw64/mingw-w64-x86_64-poppler 

Then, the tool can be built by running

make -f Makefile.win