[Tugindia] pdfscreen overlays...

[Radhakrishnan CV]

>>>>> "Abhas" == Abhas Abhinav <abhas at deeproot.co.in> writes:

    Abhas> Hi Everyone...  I needed some help with making pdfscreen
    Abhas> overlays. pdfscreen deb package ships with 10
    Abhas> overlays. 

Those are just specimens of overlays, the kind of which I liked as
background.  But people might like to have custom ones as you do. The
best way to create overlays is with psTricks and TeX if you prefer
vector graphics.  This will help you to generate sleek overlays
disproportionate to the colorful graphics they might hold.  I have
uploaded template.tex at:

  http://tug.org/~cvr/template.tex

which might be useful for you to tweak to keep your logo at the
desired location and/or any other kind of information. You need not
worry about TeX to create a overlay graphic, instead you can use your
preferrred graphic editor to create one, save it as in any one of the
file formats like, *.jpg, *.png, *.pdf or *.mps (metapost). These
formats are accepted by pdfTeX. You might note that *.eps is not
supported. 

[...]

    Abhas> Here is what I did. I converted one of the overlays from
    Abhas> pdf to ps and then opened it in GIMP to edit it, added a
    Abhas> gradient and a small logo and saved it back as ps. Then I
    Abhas> converted it to pdf and put it into the same directory as
    Abhas> the other overlays.

    Abhas> However, when I use it in a pdfscreen document, its does
    Abhas> not actually show up the same as other overlays. I even
    Abhas> tried tweaking the (pixel) size of the image bu it still
    Abhas> does not look the same.

There is a problem though.  You might note that the overlay graphic is
stretched and scaled to fill the background which means it is closely
related to the screen size you choose. Therefore, you might make your
overlay graphic to the width and height of your screensize or
proportionate to that dimensions so that stretching and scaling may
not result in skewing of the graphic. I guess, skewing might be problem
in the present case.

However, if you choose left[right]panel option, you can include your
logo with \emblema{<logo_graphic_file>} in the navigation panel. 

    Abhas> So I'd like to know the other (and actual) way to generate
    Abhas> the overlays in the first place. 

The template.tex might help you do such experiments.

    Abhas> pdfscreen documentation does not say anything about
    Abhas> designing custom overlays - I think that some docs on this
    Abhas> would be a nice value addition to the package.

pdfscreen is still at an evolutionary phase.  I've received hundreds
of requests to add more and more features to it.  The current state of
affairs is not my contribution at all, but that of thousands of users
who use it. I am only an editor and maintainer now. The greatest
advantage of free software is that it gets improvised day by day with
user interaction/contribution just because of its openness and freedom
to do anything with the software.

I have plans to include functions with which you can design your
background on the fly, put [non]repeatable graphic or textboxes at any
desired point on the page, tooltips, show/hide textboxes, mouseover
actions, etc. The job is a little trickier to have intuitive syntax so
that people may not be freightened with the horrendous syntanctic
terrorism normally associated with TeX and friends.  Hope to do all
the above or at least most of the above before the close of the year.

pdfscreen has been registered with http://sarovar.org now, people can
volunteer to revise/add features to it.

    Abhas> PS. Otherwise, pdfscreen is a great package for making
    Abhas> screen and print presentations. CVR's demo during the
    Abhas> TUGIndia - KA Chapter meet has really inspired us! Thanks!

Thank you Abhas, for your kind words. It makes my life more
meaningful.

Best regards.

Radhakrishnan