ctive-DVI

Version 1.9

Description of Active-DVI

Active-DVI is a Unix-platform DVI previewer and a programmable presenter for slides written in LaTeX.

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) in-lined-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), with precise security policy.
Scratching on slide to interactively modify the text on screen.
Synchronization indications of each slide timing during the presentation, to connect the talk with a recording/playing facility and/or to automate the show.

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.

Screen shots

Click on the image to have a look on the screen shots of Active-DVI presentations.

User's manual

The Active-DVI user's manual is available in format DVI, PS, and PDF. (The manual only exists in English version: volunteers to translate it are warmly welcomed...)

Installation of Active-DVI

Requirements

You need a Unix platform running the X11 window system.

You need the Objective Caml version 3.11.1+dev2 (2009-01-14) to compile the sources.

You also need the `kpsewhich' utility of the `kpathsea' library provided by the TeX distributions.

Download

Source distribution

Note:: Active-DVI requires the latest version of the Camlimages library. If you have not yet installed this library, we recommend to download the ADK (it is a big tar ball of Active-DVI and Camlimages, with a fully-automated-with-luck installation Makefile).
Latest stable version (1.9):: the Active-DVI source version only (You should already have Camlimages installed!)
Development version: The current CVS version of Active-DVI is available at the Caml Anonymous CVS repository.

If you find a bug, or want to get in touch with the implementors (to contribute some new ideas or lines of code) you should write to advi@inria.fr. The is the Active-DVI mailing list, which is also the forum to discuss about Active DVI. To write to the list, you should first subscribe. (We are sorry for the annoyance, but given the low traffic, we prefer this solution, even for bug reports, so as to avoid spam).

Authors

Jun Furuse, Pierre Weis, Didier Rémy, Xavier Leroy, Didier Le Botlan, Alan Schmitt, Roberto Di Cosmo, Alexandre Miquel

Acknowledgments

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.

COPYRIGHT

This program is distributed under the GNU LGPL. See the enclosed file COPYING.

Contact Pierre.Weis@inria.fr

Last modification: Tuesday, November 10, 2009 on localhost by remy.