beampdf

A simple cross-platform app to present a PDF slideshow. Based on Avalonia and MuPDF.NET.

Features

• Presenter view
  • Displays current slide and previews the next one
  • Timer (starts automatically on first slide switch, start or reset manually with S) and current system time in 24h format
• Navigate slides
  • Slide number based on PDF page labels; pages with same label are assumed to be part of a single animated slide
  • Forward and backwards via arrow keys
  • Type number and hit Enter to jump
  • Clickable slide-thumbnails with current slide highlighted
• Fullscreen slide view
  • In a separate window
  • Open with F5 close with ESC
  • Keyboard shortcuts (Shift + N to move to the n-th screen)
• Simple drawing tool
  • Sketch temporary drawings on the slide
  • Resets on slide navigation or via Backspace
  • Supports pen pressure
• Magnifier
  • Select a crop via right-click and drag or Ctrl+ left-click and drag
  • Reset via right-click or Ctrl+left
• Recent files (open dialog with R)
  • List of opened files is tracked in a .csv file in the ApplicationData folder (as reported by Environment.SpecialFolder.ApplicationData)
• Speaker notes
  • As embedded files in the PDF
    • filename must be XX-speaker-note where XX is the slide number (page label, not "real" page)
    • content is interpreted as UTF-8 string
  • As annotations: annotations in the PDF are rendered into the presenter view only
• Video via libVLCSharp
  • Embedded files in in the PDF with special filename provide video playback hints:
    • XX-video-FILENAME where XX is the slide number and FILENAME the relative path from the .pdf to the video
    • the file description must be X,Y,W where X and Y are the top left corner and W the width of the video in the .pdf (in points)
  • Playback starts automatically in the fullscreen display when the slide is opened
  • libVLC is an optional dependency; without it, PDFs that don't contain video can still be presented

Screenshots

The presenter view in action

Recent files dialog for quick PDF switching

Using beampdf

Currently, no binaries are provided. Only tested on Windows and Linux, but should run on any platform supported by Avalonia and MuPDF.NET.

To run from source, install the .NET SDK and run

dotnet run -c Release

To build deployable binaries

dotnet publish -c Release

For video support on Linux, install libvlc. Something like

# Debian / Ubuntu / etc
sudo apt install vlc libvlc-dev
# Fedora etc
sudo dnf install vlc vlc-devel

(see https://github.com/videolan/libvlcsharp/blob/3.x/docs/linux-setup.md) Without libVLC, if you open a PDF with a video, beampdf will crash when trying to play it currently.

Preventing the screen from turning off

On Windows, the screen is kept awake while the DisplayWindow is open (via WinAPI). On Linux, similar behavior can be achieved by running via

systemd-inhibit beampdf

Typst support for video and notes

See beampdf.typ for the Typst code to output speaker notes and video links in the PDF. An example for a full slide can be found in the Test directory.