Neil Lucock

neil@nlucock.freeserve.co.uk

Krishna Tateneni

tateneni@pluto.njcc.com

&kpresenter; presents different types of interfaces for you to interact with the program. Perhaps the most familiar type of interface is the menu which appears on the top of the &kpresenter; window. Clicking on the menu items gives you a list of commands from which you can choose the one you want. Many of the commands can also be accessed directly by holding down &Ctrl; or &Alt; and pressing another key on your keyboard. In the next section, each of the menu commands is described in brief. In addition to the menus, &kpresenter; also has a set of toolbars. Each toolbar consists of a collection of icons. A toolbar icon often presents a convenient shortcut to a command that is found in one of the menus. The toolbars The toolbars You can move the toolbar around by dragging the handle. Toolbars can be docked or attached to any side of the &kpresenter; window. If you like, you can also have the toolbar float in its own window, separated from the main &kpresenter; window as shown in the screenshot below: Floating toolbar Floating toolbar If you don't like dragging toolbars around, right click on the handle and a menu pops up as shown in the screenshot below: Toolbar context menu Toolbar context menu The first few items in the popup menu have to do with the placement of the toolbar. You can choose any of the four sides of the &kpresenter; window, or have the toolbar float in a separate window. Choosing Flat hides the toolbar. (If you right click on the handle of a hidden toolbar, this item appears as Unflat instead.) Choosing the last item in the menu, Mode, leads to an additional menu which lets you control the appearance of the items in toolbar. This additional cascading menu is shown in the screenshot below: The toolbar modes menu The toolbar modes menu The default view of the toolbar is icons only. In this view, if you don't know what a particular icon means, you can hold the mouse over the icon, and after a second or so, a little hint pops up in a highlighted text box as shown in the screenshot below: Tooltips Tooltips You can choose to display the toolbar items as text instead of icons, or even to combine both icons and text. If you want both text and icons, the cascading menu allows you to select whether the text appears beside the icons or below them. All four styles of displaying toolbar items are shown in the screenshot below: The toolbar styles The toolbar styles The &kpresenter; menus are discussed in the following sections. &Ctrl;N File New Begins a new presentation. The Create Document dialog will open, allowing you to choose a template for your presentation. &Ctrl;O File Open... Opens an existing presentation. A standard &kde; file open dialog will appear, allowing you to choose a file to open. File Open Recent Displays a list of recently opened files for you to choose from. &Ctrl;S File Save Saves the currently open presentation. If you have not previously saved it, you will be asked to name the file. If you have previously saved the presentation, it will be resaved with the same name. File Save As... Saves the currently open presentation with a new name. File Reload Reload the currently active file. File Import... Import a presentation that was previously created in one of several common formats. File Export... Export the currently open presentation to one of several common formats for use in another application, or for exchange with someone who does not have access to &kpresenter;. File Create HTML Slideshow... Starts the HTML wizard, which is described in the section . Template Manager Allows you to save the current slide as a template. In future the template will be available for you to use to build slides with. Creating a template is further discussed in section . File Use Current Slide As Default Template Sets the current slide as your default template. Especially useful if you have created a template of your own to fit into corporate style guidelines, or if you just use a particular layout very often. &Ctrl;P File Print... Prints the presentation. More precisely, it opens the print settings dialog, where you can adjust the settings before printing your presentation. File Print Preview... Displays the presentation with a &PostScript; viewer, exactly as it would look if printed. File Document Information... Allows you to enter information about the document. This includes information about the author, and an abstract on the documents contents. FileSend File... Create a new email message and attach the file so you can send it to someone else. &Ctrl;W File Close Close the current presentation. You will be given an opportunity to save any changes first. &Ctrl;Q File Quit Close &kpresenter;. You will be given an opportunity to save all changes in all open presentations first. &Ctrl;Z Edit Undo: Last task Undo the last action you performed. &Ctrl;&Shift;Z Edit Redo: Last undone task Redo the last action you undid. If you have not undone any actions, or the last undo action is not reversible, this menu item is disabled. &Ctrl;X Edit Cut Copy the selected item to the clipboard, and remove it from the document. &Ctrl;C Edit Copy Copy the selected item to the clipboard, while leaving it intact in your presentation. &Ctrl;V Edit Paste Insert the contents of the clipboard into your presentation. &Ctrl;Delete Edit Delete Remove the currently selected item from your presentation. &Ctrl;A Edit Select All Select all the objects and text on the current slide. &Ctrl;&Shift;AEdit Deselect Deselect any currently selected objects. &Ctrl;F Edit Find... Search for text within the presentation. F3 EditFind Next Find the next occurrence of a piece of text within a presentation. &Shift;F3 EditFind Previous Find the previous occurrence of a piece of text within a presentation. &Ctrl;R EditReplace... Replace one or more occurrences of a piece of text in your presentation with a different piece of text. Edit Copy Slide Copy the current slide to the clipboard. Edit Duplicate Slide Insert an exact copy of the current slide. Edit Delete Slide Delete the current page from the presentation. You will be asked to confirm this action. Edit Duplicate Object... Create a duplicate of the currently selected object. A dialog will display allowing you to set some options for the duplicate, ⪚ if it should be rotated, or scaled, or offset to a new position on the slide. View New View Opens another window with the same presentation loaded so you can work on more than one slide at a time. View Close All Views Close all views on the presentation. You will be given a chance to save any changes, or to cancel closing. View Split View Splits the window into two (or more) views on the same presentation. The default split is horizontal. View Remove View Close only the currently active view. The presentation, and any other views you have open, remain open, and any changes you have made remain unsaved. View Splitter Orientation Toggle the split view between Horizontal (the default) and Vertical. View Show Navigation Panel Toggle the display of the navigation panel where you can see an overview of all the slides in your presentation. View Show Header FIXME: Find out about headers View Show Footer FIXME: Find out about footers View Formatting Characters Show a visual representation of non-printing characters, such as tabs and paragraph markers. This can be a useful aid to precisely positioning text. This item can be toggled. If enabled, formatting characters are visible; if disabled, they are not. View Help Lines When working in &kpresenter; you can drag a help line from either the horizontal or vertical ruler onto your document. This guide-line will not print or display in the finished presentation, it is simply to help you align objects on screen. If this item is enabled, these help lines will be visible. If this is disabled, they will not be visible. Help lines work across slides, allowing you to align objects the same way across multiple slides. Disabling (hiding) help lines does not delete them. If you have created help lines, and then disabled this item, enabling it again will retain the help lines you created. View Help Line to Front By default, placing objects on a slide will cover any displayed help lines. You can make them visible again with this menu item, and while it is enabled, they will not be covered up. View Grid If enabled, &kpresenter; will display a grid of dots representing the intersections of imaginary horizontal and vertical lines. You can use these dots to precisely position objects on the slide. View Grid to Front By default, placing objects on a slide will cover the displayed grid. You can make it visible again with this menu item, and while it is enabled, it will not be covered up. View Snap to Grid If this is enabled, when dropping or moving objects on the slide the top left corner of the object will snap or move, to the nearest grid point. This does reduce your freedom to freely position objects on the slide, however it also helps to line up objects precisely. It is easily disabled or enabled with this menu entry, allowing you the best of both worlds. View Zoom This submenu allows you to zoom in or out of the slide. Several predefined zoom levels are available, including Whole slide to scale the entire slide so as to be visible in the size window you have open, and Width to scale the slide so it fills the entire width of the window, although you may now have to scroll vertically. There are also several other scaling choices, from 33% up to 500%. &Alt;&Shift;C Insert Special Character... Insert a special character. This might be a character you don't have a key for on your keyboard layout, for instance ü on a US Keyboard. Insert Variable Here you can insert a variable that is filled in with a value that may be updated as you update the document. Insert Link... Insert a hyperlink to a file, a website, or an email address. Insert Comment... Enter a small note that does not display during the real presentation. You might use this to comment on a colleague's text, or to leave a note for yourself about something to do later. F2 Insert Slide... Add a new page to your presentation. A dialog will open allowing you to choose a template, and whether to insert the new page before or after the currently selected page. InsertFile... FIXME: What to do with this? F10 InsertText Add a new text object. Click and drag to create a frame where you wish the text to appear. Insert Autoform FIXME: This name is a little awkward, I didn't know what it was. Perhaps 'stencil' might be a better term? Shape would work, but it's already used. Insert a pre-drawn shape, such as an arrow or a connecting line. Click and drag to draw a box stretching from the top left to the lower right, where you wish the autoform to display. It will be inserted and automatically scaled to the size of your box. F12 Insert Chart Insert a chart. Click and drag to define the size of the chart. Some default data will be displayed. Double click to edit the data and choose the type of chart to display, using the embedded &kchart; editor. FIXME: KChart has it's own help file, but a brief overview of charting in this doc wouldn't go astray either. F5 InsertTable Insert a table. Click and drag to define the size of the table. A &kspread; open dialog will display. You may import a spreadsheet that you have saved in one of many formats, including plain text files. You may also choose to create a new and empty table. Double clicking on the table will allow you to edit the contents. Insert Object FIXME: This needs a section of it's own An object is an embeddable file, in one of many formats. A common use of this action is to insert scaleable clipart in vector format. &Shift;F5 Insert Picture... Insert a raster image. These are not as easily scaleable as vector images or clipart. &kpresenter; currently understands many formats, including .tiff, .jpg, .png and many more. Insert Line You can insert several types of lines. Line drawing is described further in the section. Insert Shape You can insert several prepared shapes, in vector format. These are editable just like lines you have drawn yourself. Using the drawing tools is described in detail in the drawing tools section. F4 Insert Clipart... Insert scaleable clipart in vector format. &kpresenter; can currently import clipart in the .wmf or Windows Meta File format, which is common on &Windows;. Insert Scan Image... Scan an image with a scanner. This requires you have a scanner installed. FIXME: Document how to set up a scanner that &kpresenter; can use. Format Select If you have been using a tool such as the line drawing tool which does not allow you to select other objects, you can use this menu item to return to the normal selection cursor. Format Rotate Changes the cursor to a double headed curved arrow. Drag with the cursor to rotate the object on the slide. When you are happy with the position of the object, click to stop rotating. If you change your mind and wish to cancel the rotation, you can press the &Esc; key to cancel, or use EditUndo to later undo it. Format Arrange Objects This is where you can manipulate the stacking order of objects on the slide. An object that is on top will cover, either partially or fully depending on its size, all other objects beneath it. Meanwhile an object on the bottom of the stack may not be visible at all, as it is covered up by other objects. An object in the middle may be partially covered by other objects, while partially covering yet more objects itself. You can send the selected object down or up a layer, or directly to the top or bottom of the stack. Format Align Objects In the submenu you can quickly align all the currently selected objects with a side of the slide, or center them either vertically or horizontally. Format Shadow Objects This puts a colored copy of either text or a drawn object behind it. You can make nice dropped shadows for logos with this tool. To work with text, ensure that you have the text box selected (you will see the six small black boxes around the outline.) You choose the color, select which way the shadow is going to fall and select a distance. For text it looks nice if you set the distance to two or three. Click Apply to see the result. Format Group Objects If you are drawing, you might want to make something out of several rectangles or circles. Arrange the individual parts where you want them, select one, then hold down the Shift key as you click in the others you want to group together. Click Group objects and from then on they act as if they are just one thing. It glues things together. Format Ungroup Objects If you decide that you want to alter an object that is made out of several pieces, you can unglue it with this tool. Click somewhere away from the object to deselect it, then click to select one of its parts. Format Page Layout... Allows you to set the page details. You can specify the margins, the orientation, either portrait (higher than wide) or Landscape (wider than high) formats. There are many templates, such as screen, A4, US legal. Format Slide Background... Allows you to alter the background to your presentation slides. Your options are color, (which lets you set either a plain color or one of many gradients) Clipart (which gives a dialog box to let you find your clipart on your hard drive) or picture, which again gives a dialog box to find the picture you want. If you want a plain color, click in the box to select it. Gradients only work when you have chosen two colors. The picture option allows you to center the picture, zoom it to cover the entire slide (if it is smaller than the screen, this is very useful) or tile it. This is used when you want a small pattern to repeat across the page. It's probably best used with patterns rather than pictures of logos. You can get rid of a picture by selecting another one or choosing a color/gradient. Format Properties The properties dialog for an object allows you to manipulate it in a very detailed manner. This menu modifies text and gives a few word processing tools to use when you are making presentations with extensive amounts of text in them. To have any effect you must have first created some text by making a text box (the tool to the left of the main screen with ab in the center). Once you have a text box, double click inside it to make the insertion point appear. It looks like a vertical line. Write a few words, ⪚ Kpresenter can do everything I need, then sweep across the text while holding the left mouse button to highlight it. It should make a gray rectangle appear behind the text. Anything included within the rectangle will be affected by the tools you use under this menu. Text Default Format FIXME: What is this? A reset to defaults? Find out. Text Font... Click the Font menu entry to show the dialog box. The font option dialog The font option dialog This lets you change the font you are using, the style ⪚ change from Bold to Italic, the size and the character set. A preview window shows how it will look, click Ok to change the selected text in your presentation or Cancel to return without making changes. &Alt;&Ctrl;P Text Paragraph... FIXME: Find out and describe how this works Text Color... This tool is used to change the color of the selected text. The color selector The color selector The Color Selector dialog has a series of useful tools. On the left is a box with various colors in it. Clicking on the color you want selects it and makes it appear in the square box in the lower center of this dialog box. To the right of the colored box is a vertical grayscale slider tool. You can make the color you have chosen darker or lighter by sliding the small triangle to the right or clicking in the slider box itself. Underneath the color choice box on the left are values for H, S & V (Hue, Saturation and Value) and R, G & B (Red Green and Blue). Color values can be typed into the boxes if you want to match a known color used in a drawing or picture. On the top right is a combo box. The default display is Recent Colors. Click the colored square you want in the display to choose it. Custom Colors allows you to maintain a separate group of colors you prefer to use. Once you have found a color you like, add it to this group with the Add to Custom Colors button underneath this dialog box. There is no tool provided to remove colors from this. 40 Colors and Web Colors might be used if you wanted to make a web page with a small number of colors to keep the filesize small for faster downloads. The Royal group gives colors from brown to purple via yellow and blue. Named Colors are a nice spread of colors with names. At the bottom of the right side we have a color picker. It is the pipette icon from art programs. If you have a picture displayed on your screen, you can choose a color you like from the picture. Click the tool, then click on the picture to select a color you like. Underneath is the name of the color (if it has one) and the HTML value (starting with #) of the color. If you want the text in a web page to match a color you have chosen, you can put this value in your html code. Once you have a color you like, click Ok to change its color on the page or Cancel to return without making changes. &Alt;&Ctrl;S Text Style Manager FIXME: Write a separate 'Working with styles' section The style manager allows you to create an entire set of attributes that will be applied to selected text all at once. Text Import Style... Here you can import styles you have defined in another &kpresenter; document. Text Style Apply a style you have defined to the currently selected text. Text Create Style From Selection Copy the properties of the currently selected text and save them as a style that you may apply to other text. &Alt;L Text Align Align has a submenu giving several options: Align Left, Align Center, Align Right, and Align Block which is also commonly known as justify. Text is by default aligned at the left margin of a text box. Text Type Turn the currently selected text into a list, either numbered or bulleted. If you choose numbered, you can then select a numbering style, and likewise if you choose bulleted you can choose the style of bullets to use. To change a list back to plain text, select None as the style. &Ctrl;+ Text Increase Depth &Ctrl;- Text Decrease Depth Increase Depth and Decrease depth move the list paragraph to the right (Increase Depth) or back to the left (Decrease Depth). &kpresenter; gets clever with bullet points &kpresenter; gets clever with bullet points The diagram shows indented text, different styles and colors of bullet points. Text Extend Contents To Object Height Text Extend Object To Fit The Contents Extend Contents to Object Height and Extend Object to fit the Contents help to resize text within the text box or make the text box fit the text you have typed or pasted into it. Text Insert Page Number Insert a page number. FIXME: Find out if this is dynamic Text Change Case... Change the case or capitalization of the currently selected text. You may choose between several styles of capitalization, including all lower or uppercase, book style capitalization where each word except conjunctions has an initial capital letter, and sentence style capitalization where the first word in a sentence is capitalized. Text Spellcheck &kpresenter; can automatically spellcheck text as you type it, which you can enable and disable here. If you prefer to check spelling on demand than automatically, you can begin a spelling check here. EditEnable Autocorrection FIXME: Confirm what this does: If this is enabled, common spelling errors will be corrected as you type. ⪚ if you type Teh it will be corrected to The automatically. Text Apply Autocorrection... If you did not choose to enable autocorrection, you can apply it on demand here. Slide Show Configure Slide Show... FIXME: Write a working with slideshows section You can set up the properties for the entire slide show here, including whether to show the duration on screen, which of the slides in a presentation to include, and several other global settings. This is discussed in detail in the FIXME: link to presentation section. Slide Show Edit Slide Transition Apply transition effects to the currently open slide. This is where you can choose how the transition from one slide to the next will be handled. The transition effects you select here are applied on the transition from this slide to the next. Slide Show Start Begin the slideshow from the current slide. Slide Show Start From First Slide Begin the slideshow from the first slide. Home Slide Show Go To Start Go directly to the first slide in the slide show. Page Up Slide Show Previous Slide Go back to the previous slide in the slide show. Page Down Slide Show Next Slide Go to the next slide in the slide show. End Slide Show Go To End Go immediately to the final slide in the slide show. The Settings menu allows you to customize &kpresenter;. Settings Toolbars The items in this submenu can be toggled, that is, you can both enable and disable the display of specific toolbars here. Settings Type Anywhere Cursor FIXME: Find out what this is Settings Configure Autocorrection... Autocorrection is &kpresenter;'s ability to correct common typing errors or expand abbreviations independently of the spell checking function. There are several common typing errors entered for you by default such as replacing teh with the and you can add as many more as you like. The ability to expand abbreviations can save you a lot of typing time, if you often repeat text whether in the same presentation or in multiple presentations. For instance, if you work for Company with a really really long name Inc. then you might define an autocorrection entry so that whenever you type myJob or some other piece of unique text, it will be replaced with Company with a really really long name Inc.. Autocorrection can be applied automatically as you type, or only on demand when you choose it from the Text menu. Settings Configure Shortcuts Configure Shortcuts allows you to assign a keyboard shortcut to actions that &kpresenter; menus or icons contain. Customize Shortcuts Customizing the shortcuts If you try to assign a shortcut that is already used, it will give you a warning message. Highlight what you want to do (in the picture, I have chosen to make a keyboard shortcut to About KDE). Click the radio button to the Custom Key setting and type the key you want to use. I assigned Control key and Y to bring up the About KDE dialog box. The button shows what has been assigned. Click OK to make the changes, click Default to restore whatever was assigned as default, click Cancel to do nothing and leave the dialog. Configure Toolbars allows you to add or delete icons on each of the toolbars. Configuring &kpresenter; Configuring &kpresenter; At the top is a Drop Down box to enable you to choose which toolbar you want to modify. In the picture Koffice Shell is selected. If I want to add the About KDE icon to that toolbar, I click the entry in the left window. The arrow pointing right becomes available, if I click the arrow the About KDE entry is added to the selected toolbar. the left arrow is available when you click in the right side window. It allows you to remove an icon from a toolbar. The up and down arrows become active when items on both sides are selected. You can move the highlight in the right side window up and down with the keyboard arrow keys or by clicking on the arrows with the mouse. The Configure Kpresenter menu entry gives two menu boxes. Configuring &kpresenter; Configuring &kpresenter; The Interface icon on the left allows us to adjust the time settings on the autosave feature. The bottom two sliders allow the Raster settings to be adjusted. This still needs a little more work. They control the minimum size of objects (such as boxes) drawn on screen. You may find that you cannot make a box smaller than a certain size. The second icon is labelled Color Configuring &kpresenter; Configuring &kpresenter; It changes the background color of the text box as you type text in (in the picture, I have made it green. There is a color choice dialog box). The Text boxes are white by default. If you had a dark background color and you wanted to put some white text over it, you could color the text box so that you could see what you were typing. When you have finished, the area around the text would revert to whatever the background color was. The Default button restores the original settings. &help.menu.documentation;