Is there a specialized Pdf viewer for Latex-Beamer presentations on Linux?
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 Ubuntu man-pages are outdated, so one should consult the man pages on the site.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.
In case you're still interested, I have written a small viewing application in C++, called "dspdfviewer" for "Dual-Screen PDF Viewer".
Its built specifically for latex-beamer, and it's "show notes on second screen" option. This latex-beamer option will give you a double-width PDF, where the right part are your beamer-notes, and the right part can include a small preview of the current/next page. Check out the beamerguide for details. Only, I did not find a viewing application to correctly display those kinds of PDFs.
My program splits the PDF file in half and renders the left half in fullscreen on the "primary" screen (intended for the audience) and the second half together with some timers on the "secondary" screen (your notebook for example).
It currently works with Debian wheezy, and Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric) and newer.
You can download it for Ubuntu on the ppa https://launchpad.net/~dannyedel/+archive/dspdfviewer
The sourcecode is available at https://github.com/dannyedel/dspdfviewer, and the documentation is available as man page (included in the deb packages as "man dspdfviewer").
Browsing around this morning, I came across pympress.
It is cross-platform as it is written in python, and has the presenter look & feel you're looking for, with a window to show slides on screen and another for your laptop with time, slide numbers, next slide preview, annotations, etc.
A few other nice features are native support for beamer notes on second screen, embedded videos, and more.