PPower4

PPower4 is used to post process (La)TeX files formatted with pdf(la)tex to be able to build pages step by step during a presentation. The software is written in Java and it is free (refer to the GNU general public license). It has been run successfully with Java 1.1.6 and 1.2.x on different flavours of Unix and Win32. If you use kaffe, make sure that you have at least version 1.0.5 (out since October 18th, 1999) and use at least version 0.7.1 of PPower4.

On this page you find further information on PPower4 and a download area.

There is also a mailing list concerning applications and problems of PPower4 to which you can subscribe. Just send the text "subscribe" (without the quotes) in the body of the message. The messages of this list are archived on mail-archive.com. To send messages to the list it is necessary that you subscribe to it first.

Thanks to David Wilson from Utopia Precision Typesetting for the idea of post processing.

News

• You can create different transition effects for partial pages.
  
• You can refer to the first part of an incrementally built page, which is identified as page.x in the PDF file, with the hyper-reference first.x.

Side note: Use hyperref for transitions between pages generated by pdflatex. You may want to use the abbreviations for hyperref actions, which were kindly prepared by Marc van Dongen.

Information and Download area

• There is a demonstration document (German or English, both PDF format) and a report on PPower4 (again German or English, both PDF format)
  Note: This document does not describe the extensions released in April 2000.
• the sources of the examples (you knew that: in German or English, both zip archives) given in the report
• the required style files (a zip archive, updated 05 Apr 2000). Note that the file pdfslide.sty quoted in examples and the report has been renamed to pp4slide.sty to avoid a name conflict with another package.
• the complete software in pp4.jar a jar archive (no need to unpack it!) version 0.8.4, updated 04 May 2000, 175023 bytes). See below for an alternative version, if you are just starting to use PPower4 and if you can run Java2 programs.
  Note: Version 0.8.4 fixes a bug processing gray scale values for backgrounds.
  Version 0.8.3 fixed a bug reading pdf files with empty lines in streams.
  Version 0.8.2 fixed a bug in creating the new first page hyperlinks in documents with more hyperlinks.
• a shell script ppower4 to run the software under Unix. It needs to be modified to know the location of your copy of the pp4.jar file.
• a batch file ppower4.bat to run the software under Win32. It also needs to be modified to know the location of your copy of the pp4.jar file and the Java runtime environment. Thanks to Christophe Declercq for providing this.
  If someone can supply a script for other environments and is willing to share it, I can include it here.
• the sources of the Java classes for PPower4 itself (33508 bytes).
  If you only want to run the program, you do not need this.
  For extensions or modifications in PPower4 the sources (from pp4src.jar) should be sufficient.
  But if you want to compile also the other libraries yourself, you need some more packages:
  • the (GPLed) pj-library from Etymon Systems, Inc. to process PDF files,
  • my patches to speed up reading of PDF files in version 0.22 of the pj-library and to fix processing of empty lines in pdf streams, and the additional Java class for buffered random access (24306 bytes),
  • another patch to fix processing of floating point numbers in version 0.22 of the pj-library and to overcome problems with kaffe 1.0.5
  • and a getopt implementation in Java (gnu.getopt) from GNU.
• Frequently asked questions may be answered already.

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• There is another version of PPower4, which will become the default later this year. It has the same functionality as the version above, but it is based on another library to process the PDF file. We are currently developing this library and have reached a state, that the functionality needed for PPower4 and some more tools is realized.
  This new library (code name "PAUL" for "Pdf Advanced Universal Library") is still not available in source form, because we need to review it again. According to our tests this library is faster and requires less memory for operation than the one formerly used.
  Using this version, you can take advantage of additional tools (currently just one is offered).
  Please note that the library requires Java version 1.2.x (Java2) and thus does not work with kaffe. The resulting output files will be tagged to be PDF version 1.3.
  • the jar file pp4p.jar (232396 bytes) including ppower4 functionality (version 0.8.4, updated 04 May 2000) and the new library.
    Note: Version 0.8.4 fixes a bug processing gray scale values for backgrounds.
    Version 0.8.3 fixed a bug reading pdf files with empty lines in streams.
    Version 0.8.2 fixed a bug in creating the new first page hyperlinks in documents with more hyperlinks.
  • Either replace pp4.jar with the new pp4p.jar or use the the command scripts ppower4p (Unix) or ppower4p.bat (Win32). Make sure to update the scripts to refer to the location of your copy of the pp4p.jar file
  • To create thumbnails use pp4p.jar and the shell script pdfthumb.
    Currently this script is only available for Unix. It calls GhostScript (gs, version 5.50 or better, 6.x is recommended) to render the thumbnail images. Make sure to update the script to refer to the location of your copy of the pp4p.jar file. The usage of the command is similar to that of ppower4.
    If someone can manage to call gs.exe from Java under Win32, we can provide this functionality for those users too. Please let me know.

If you prefer fetching the files through ftp, have a look on your favourite CTAN host in the tex-archive/support/ppower4 directory.

Note: All zip archives contain only text files and are created with cr/lf line end markers. Under Unix please use the appropriate option of unzip to get lf line ends.

Any suggestions or other hints for improvement are welcome. Also concerning typos or bad English or html in this text.
Too bad that everybody seems to ignore this request :-(