PPower4 FAQ

• Q: Do I need a full Java implementation to run PPower4?
  A: No, it is sufficient for running PPower4, to install the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) and then call jre instead of java
• Q: I would like to find the whole set of options for pdfpagetransition.
  A: This is a matter of the transition effect for PDF files, described in section 6.4.1.4 of the PDF reference manual (5.5 MB) by Adobe.
  Marc van Dongen has kindly prepared some additional commands to access the effects and agreed to publish these. Thanks!
  For transition effects between partial builds of a page refer to the extensions demo.
• Q: Can I use thumbnails with PPower4?
  A: Together with the development of our new PDF processing library we have created a programm to add thumbnails to PDF files. It needs to run GhostScript as a subprocess. At the moment this is only available for Unix users.
• Q: Is there a list of planned enhancements?
  A: Besides the major activities concerning the development of the library to replace the pj-library, a beta-test version with items appearing in arbitrary sequence in the presentation is available. It also allows highlighting of items during your presentation. This version requires Java2.
• Q: Is there an archive of the mailing list?
  A: Yes, you find it (while supplies last;-) here, hosted by mail-archive.com. Archiving was started on December 7, 1999. Earlier messages are recorded only as far as they made it into my personal log.
• Q: You have used the foils.sty in your documents. I can find such a file neither in my teTeX distribution nor on CTAN. Where do I get this file?
  A: foils.sty is created from foiltex.dtx, which can be found on CTAN. Watch out for the copyright. It is in the nonfree tree.

• Q: When I look at the demo, the reader comes up in full screen mode and then freezes...return and page down do not work.
  A: Make sure that the reader application has the keyboard input focus. Maybe you have to download the demo files to local disk, then start the reader and select the demo document from the "File" menu.
• Q: I tried to compile exm2.tex but the background is still white.
  A: To have background colors you must run the post processor first and then view the resulting output pdf.
• Q: I tried to use gradient background, but my initial monochrome background is still there.
  A: To have gradient colors you must run the post processor and then view the resulting output pdf.
  But beware: if you use the pagecolor macro from pdftex.def, the post processor does not remove that and it sticks to the page covering any post processor added backgrounds.
• Q: When I typeset fractions, the bar is written in a different color.
  A: This problem is independent of PPower4. It seems to be resolved in versions 4.05 of Acrobat Reader. Time to update your version?
• Q: When I start ppower4 using kaffe as the Java VM, I get a java.lang.OutOfMemoryError at kaffe.io.CharToByteConverter.carry.
  A: Please upgrade to kaffe 1.0.5, out since October 18th, 1999.
• Q: When I start ppower4 using kaffe as the Java VM, my hyperlinks do not work.
  A: Make sure, that you use at least PPower 0.7.1 with kaffe 1.0.5 or better. Otherwise even stranger things can happen, if you use pdftex 0.14 or better.
• Q: I get this message error when trying to execute ppower4.bat:
  C:\xxx>C:\jdk1.2.2\jre\bin\java.exe -cp C:\xxx\pp4.jar de.tu_darmstadt.sp.pp4.PPower4
count = 0, total = 76
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: de/tu_darmstadt/sp/pp4/PPower4
  A: Most probably the file pp4.jar was damaged during download. Check the file size, because most damages will lead to different lengths. If you find this problem when you downloaded the file after February 2000, please let me know and try getting the file through (binary) ftp from CTAN.

Thank you!

Last modified: Thu Jun 15 08:55:50 MET DST 2000