&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. The menus The menus 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. Each toolbar has a thin stippled area, which acts as a handle for that toolbar. The stippled area is shown highlighted in red in the screenshot below: The toolbars The toolbars Clicking on the toolbar handle results in that toolbar being flattened so that you have some extra space for viewing the main editing window: Flattened toolbar Flattened toolbar Clicking on the toolbar handle a second time brings the toolbar back. You can also 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 pop-up 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. The File Menu The File Menu &Ctrl;N File New Begins a new presentation. The Choose dialogue will open, allowing you to choose a template for your presentation. &Ctrl;O File Open Opens an existing presentation. A standard &kde; file open dialogue 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 Create HTML Slideshow... Starts the HTML wizard, which is described in the section . File Create Template From Current Slide... 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 dialogue, 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 document's contents. &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. The Edit Menu The Edit Menu &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 will instead read No Redo Possible and 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;Del 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. Edit Copy Page Copy the current slide to the clipboard. Edit Duplicate Page Insert an exact copy of the current slide. Edit Delete Page... Delete the current page from the presentation. You will be asked to confirm this action. &Ctrl;F Edit Find... Search for text within the presentation. Edit Header/Footer... Insert a header and/or footer into the presentation. This will display on every page. The View Menu The View Menu 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 Sidebar Toggle the display of the sidebar where you can see an overview of all the slides in your presentation. The Insert Menu The Insert Menu F2 Insert Page... Add a new page to your presentation. A dialogue will open allowing you to choose a template, and whether to insert the new page before or after the currently selected page. F3 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. 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. TODO: Document how to set up a scanner that &kpresenter; can use. The Format Menu The Format Menu Format Pen And Brush... Brings up a dialogue box that modifies the thickness, style (dashed or solid) colour and thickness of a line. It also gives you the Brush (paint bucket or flood fill) options. Note that if you have a line selected, it only gives you the line options, but as a solid shape has both a line around the outside and an area to fill in the middle of the shape, it will give both dialogues. It also gives both if nothing is selected. The Brush allows both plain colour fills and several gradients. By moving the dialogue box out of the way and clicking Apply, you can see the effect of your changes. The OK button closes the dialogue box. Format Configure Pie/Arc/Chord... You must first make a pie slice, an arc or a chord using the fifth tool down on the toolbar to the left of the work area. Once a shape has been made, you can change it to one of the other options and alter the shape by putting in different values in the boxes. The Length box has the most noticeable effect and is the one to use to change the shape from the default to what you need. Format Configure Rectangle... Draw a rectangle and it has right angles at each corner. The dialogue box allows you to set the X and Y values (either type in a number, use the slider or spinbox arrows) to make rounded corners on your box. If you set both values to 99, your rectangle becomes a circle if it started off fairly square or an elipse if it was longer on one axis. &Ctrl;L Format Lower Objects When you draw a new object (⪚ a rectangle), it is on an invisible layer. Newer objects (drawn after it) are on a layer above it, and if both are in the same place, the newer object will be the one on top. If this is not what you want, you can use &Ctrl;L to make a newly drawn object go behind one you drew earlier. &Ctrl;R Format Raise Objects Raises an object drawn earlier to be in front of an object drawn after it Format Rotate Objects This gives you the option to rotate a selected object by either 90, 180 or 270 degrees or by any other value. Click the Custom Radio button and use the slider to move the preview to whatever value you need. If you are not sure, choose 20 degrees (or some other small value) and hit Apply several times until you are happy with the result. What's the zero degrees Radio button for? It is an undo button. It sets the object you have rotated back to its original position. Format Shadow Objects This put as coloured copy of either text or a drawn object behind it. You can make nice dropped shadows for logos with this tool. To make it 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 colour, 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 Align Objects Align Objects has another menu as part of it. Select an object that you have drawn or some text (ensure that you have the text box selected, you will see the six small black boxes around the outline) and click one of the options. The selected object moves to the left, top centre or wherever you have chosen. It's useful for page layout when you want some text boxes to align neatly on one side of the slide you have made. 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 Page Background... Allows you to alter the background to your presentation slides. Your options are colour, (which lets you set either a plain colour or one of many gradients) Clipart (which gives a dialogue box to let you find your clipart on your hard drive) or picture, which again gives a dialogue box to find the picture you want. If you want a plain colour, click in the box to select it. Gradients only work when you have chosen two colours. The picture option allows you to centre 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 colour/gradient. This menu modifies text and gives a few word processing tools to use when you are making presentations with text rather than drawings in them. The Text Menu The Text Menu 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 centre). 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 grey rectangle appear behind the text. Anything included within the rectangle will be affected by the tools you use under this menu. Text Font... You have to click the Font menu entry to show the dialogue box. The font option dialogue The font option dialogue 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. Text Colour... The Colour menu entry has an underlined letter A to the left to show that there is an icon on a taskbar that you can use. This tool is used to change the colour of the selected text. The colour selector The colour selector The Colour Selector dialogue has a series of useful tools. On the left is a box with various colors in it. Clicking on the colour you want selects it and makes it appear in the square box in the lower centre of this dialogue box. To the right of the coloured box is a vertical greyscale slider tool. You can make the colour you have chosen darker or lighter by sliding the small triangle to the right or clicking in the slider box itself. Underneath the colour choice box on the left are values for H, S & V (Hue, Saturation and Value) and R, G & B (Red Green and Blue). Colour values can be typed into the boxes if you want to match a known colour used in a drawing or picture. On the top right is a drop down box. The default display is Recent Colours. Click the coloured square you want in the display to choose it. Custom Colours allows you to maintain a separate group of colours you prefer to use. Once you have found a colour you like, add it to this group with the Add to Custom Colours button underneath this dialogue box. There is no tool provided to remove colours from this. 40 Colours and Web Colours might be used if you wanted to make a web page with a small number of colours to keep the file size small for faster downloads. The Royal group gives colours from brown to purple via yellow and blue. Named Colours are a nice spread of colours with names. At the bottom of the right side we have a colour picker. It is the pipette icon from art programs. If you have a picture displayed on your screen, you can choose a colour you like from the picture. Click the tool, then click on the picture to select a colour you like. Underneath is the name of the colour (if it has one) and the HTML value (starting with #) of the colour. If you want the text in a web page to match a colour you have chosen, you can put this value in your html code. Once you have a colour you like, click Ok to change its colour on the page or Cancel to return without making changes. Text Settings Settings has a spanner to the left to show that there is an icon to use on the toolbars. This allows you to tell &kpresenter; how to display an Unsorted list, better known as bullet points. Configuring bullet points Configuring bullet points You can have four levels of indented bullet points (useful if you are making a list of items under a bullet point, then another list under that one). You can have filled or outline circles and squares are your bullet points. A nice touch is the ability to specify the colour of the bullet points. The black bars in the diagram are colour selection dialogue boxes. Click inside to modify the colour of the bullet points. The spacing of the lines, paragraphs and margins of the bullet point list can also be modified using the tools on the right. Underneath is an area that has been created for a enumerated (numbered) list. If this is greyed out it has not yet been written. &Alt;L Text Align Align has a sub-menu giving three options: Align Left, Align Centre and Align Right and also shows the keyboard shortcuts to use. Text is usually aligned at the left margin of a text box. If was want it to align to the right or would like it centred, we can use this tool. Text Type Type allows us to make an Unsorted list (bullet points) or remove them by making them Normal Text. &Ctrl;+ Text Increase Depth &Ctrl;- Text Decrease Depth Increase Depth and Decrease depth move the Unsorted 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 colours 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 re-size text within the text box or make the text box fit the text you have typed or pasted into it. The Screen Presentations Menu The Screen Presentations Menu Screen Presentations Configure Pages... Screen Presentations Assign Effect... Screen Presentations Start Screen Presentations View Current Page Home Screen Presentations Go To Start Page Up Screen Presentations Previous Step Page Down Screen Presentations Next Step End Screen Presentations Go To End Screen Presentations Pen Colour... Screen Presentations Pen Width # Screen Presentations Open Presentation Structure Editor The Tools Menu The Tools Menu The Tools menu contains details of keyboard shortcut keys. (Note that the Insert menu has three other shortcut keys: Insert Page with F2, Insert Picture with F3, and Insert Clipart with F4). If you prefer to use both hands, you can draw with the mouse and change what you are doing without having to move the pointer to click on the Toolbar Icon. For example, draw a rectangle (F7 key) and when you have finished, the F5 key will put the mouse back into the select mode. F5 Tools Mouse Use the mouse to draw with. F6 Tools Line Draw a straight line. Click with the left mouse button where you want the line to start, and drag to where you want the line to end. You can select the line later and drag the node handles to resize or scale it. Tools Freehand Draw a freehand shape. Click with the &LMB; to begin, and draw with your mouse. Release the mouse button to stop drawing. Tools Polyline A polyline is a shape made up of straight lines. Click with the &LMB; to begin. Click again where the first line segment should stop, and click again to draw a second line segment connected to the first. Tools Quadric Bezier Curve Click with the &LMB; to begin drawing. Click again to set the endpoint of the curve. Drag the mouse to change the shape of the curve. Click with the &RMB; to finish drawing. Tools Cubic Bezier Curve Click with the &LMB; to begin drawing. Click again to set the endpoint of the curve. Drag the mouse to change the shape of the curve. Click with the &RMB; to finish drawing. F7 Tools Rectangle Draw a rectangle. Click with the &LMB; to begin the rectangle, move the mouse to where you want the opposite corner to be, and click again. Click with the &RMB; on the rectangle and choose Configure Rectangle to change the sharpness of the corners, and to fill in the rectangle with colour or not. F8 Tools Circle/Ellipse Draw a circle or ellipse. Click with the &LMB; to begin the circle, move the mouse to where you want the opposite side to be, and click again. F9 Tools Pie/Arc/Chord Draw a shape shaped like a piece of pie. Click with the &LMB; to begin the shape, move the mouse to where you want the opposite side to be, and click again. F10 Tools Text F11 Tools Autoform Choose from a variety of predefined shapes. At present, these are arrows, in various directions, and connectors that you can use to construct flow charts. F12 Tools Diagram &Ctrl;F1 Tools Table The Table menu option requires you to first draw a square or rectangle with the left mouse button held down. It will then give you a menu. You use it when you want to put a spreadsheet into your presentation. The import options are: &kspread;, Gnumeric, &Microsoft; Excel, Quattro Pro, Applix, Text with comma separated values or plain text. You also have options to either insert a recently used document or to start with an empty document. &Ctrl;F2 Tools Object The menu entry Object has a sub-menu. You can choose to import an object created in one of the other &koffice; tools. Again, you must first draw a square or rectangle before it gives you a menu where you can choose a file to import. The Settings menu allows us to customise &kpresenter;. Settings menu The Settings Menu The top seven menu entries control what toolbars are displayed. Clicking on the tick on the left removes it (or restores it). It's useful if you want a little more working area and do not intend to use one of the toolbars. Settings Configure Key Bindings Configure Key Bindings allows you to assign a keyboard shortcut to actions that &kpresenter; menus or icons contain. Customise Keybindings Customising the key bindings 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 TDE). 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 TDE dialogue 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 dialogue. 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 TDE 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 TDE 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 can not make a box smaller than a certain size. The second icon is labelled Colour Configuring &kpresenter; Configuring &kpresenter; It changes the background colour of the text box as you type text in (in the picture, I have made it green. There is a colour choice dialogue box). The Text boxes are white by default. If you had a dark background colour and you wanted to put some white text over it, you could colour 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 colour was. The Default button restores the original settings. &help.menu.documentation;