PDFCube 0.0.2

PDF Cube uses Poppler and OpenGL APIs to add 3D spinning cube page transitions to PDF documents.

PDF Cube is a tiny (28KiB) program to render PDF presentations with special 3D effects (the omnipresent rotating cube and 5 predefined zoom animations). It adds eye-candy to your PDF presentations, even Latex, Beamer and Prosper ones.

You get a 3D cube transition pressing "c" and you can zoom on 5 areas with "h", "j", "k", "l" and "z" keys or simply switching pages with double buffering (no redrawing is visible) and with full anti-alias.

If you want to program your cube transitions in advance give the page you want the transition at on the command line this way (0 means between page 1 and page 2, rudimental but will change sooner or later):

 $ pdfcube file.pdf 0 5 10

Rotating 3D cube transition is of great effect when put on a big projection screen, so be moderate! One or two cube transitions done when changing argument can help understanding that you are switching to a new part of the presentation. On the other hand using cube transition on every page can give seasickness to your audience ;).

This is alpha software (and right now it's a quick hack too), but once you manage to get it working it's fairly stable and usable.

If you want to hack on the code feel free to contact me at <mirko.maischberger@…> either via mail or via jabber.

Compatibility

See PdfCubeCompatibility to know which hardware pdfcube runs on and success stories.

What's new

• 0.0.2 Added autotools (configure, make, make install as usual).
• 0.0.1 Initial release.

Future Plans

• Use the strategy pattern to clearly uncouple animations from cube logic.
• Add MoreAnimations.
• Have a mini-language so we can program presentations (cube animations, zooming, other transitions).
• Read transitions effects from PDF file.
• Jeferson J. Arenzon suggested adding a layer to draw with the mouse, useful during presentations.
• Joachim Breitner suggested to make PDF links active and pointed me to  this opengl page.

Dependencies

• Linux with Xorg
• Poppler (>=0.5.4 recommended) (Debian/Ubuntu? package: libpoppler-dev libpoppler-glib-dev)
• GtkGlExt (Debian/Ubuntu? package: libgtkglext1-dev)
• OpenGL (freeglut3-dev, not really needed, will be removed in 0.0.3)

Contact information

Feel free to write to <mirko.maischberger@…>

I'm a  senior software engineer and  OR PhD student. Please also note that this is a hobby/fun project to experiment with OpenGL and born for my personal use.  Here is a more serious project of mine.

Reviews

•  Chris Tyler's review.
•  www.OpenGL.org
•  Linux Weekly News

Word of Mouth

If you like this project please support by:

• Sending code and ideas
• Blogging it
•  Voting it on Freshmeat
•  Voting it on GnomeFiles

Downloading

Download the latest version here:

http://code.100allora.it/pdfcube/attachment/wiki/WikiStart/pdfcube-0.0.2.tar.gz or using svn

Type "./configure && make", read error messages, install needed development packages, make again!

• Thanks to Alexander Wirt, pdfcube is now in main of  Debian unstable. You can simply apt-get it! Great Alex, Debian is my favourite distro! Alex also provided a nice manpage that will be added on svn and in the next 0.0.3 release.
• PDF Cube is included in Fedora 8 (Everything section).
• Seems like PDF Cube found its way into Ubuntu Gutsy (Universe)  Package Information.

Mailing list

PDF Cube is an open source, spare-time, money-less, project and needs your help!

Are you a skilled OpenGL developer? Do you simply want to discuss how PDF cube should evolve? Do you just want to ask some questions regarding PDF Cube usage?

Join the mailing list:  http://lists.100allora.it/mailman/listinfo/pdfcube-dev and start asking (you need to subscribe to write to the list)!

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