Impressive is a

free and open-source Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...

software that displays presentation slides with 3D-effects. It is a lightweight and easy to use

console Console may refer to: Computing and video games * System console, a physical device to operate a computer ** Virtual console, a user interface for multiple computer consoles on one device ** Command-line interface, a method of interacting with ...

presentation software with focus on PDF documents and images. It was started by Martin Fiedler in 2005.

Features

Impressive is a simple

presentation program A computing, a presentation program (also called presentation software) is a software package used to display information in the form of a slide show. It has three major functions: * an editor that allows text to be inserted and formatted * a ...

that displays slide show

PDF Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...

documents,

LaTeX Latex is an emulsion (stable dispersion) of polymer microparticles in water. Latexes are found in nature, but synthetic latexes are common as well. In nature, latex is found as a milky fluid found in 10% of all flowering plants (angiosperms ...

slides or

digital image A digital image is an image composed of picture elements, also known as ''pixels'', each with ''finite'', '' discrete quantities'' of numeric representation for its intensity or gray level that is an output from its two-dimensional functions ...

s in the

JPEG JPEG ( ) is a commonly used method of lossy compression for digital images, particularly for those images produced by digital photography. The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and imag ...

, PNG,

TIFF Tag Image File Format, abbreviated TIFF or TIF, is an image file format for storing raster graphics images, popular among graphic artists, the publishing industry, and photographers. TIFF is widely supported by scanning, faxing, word processin ...

and BMP

file formats A file format is a standard way that information is encoded for storage in a computer file. It specifies how bits are used to encode information in a digital storage medium. File formats may be either proprietary or free. Some file formats ...

, adding 3D effects. Presentation slides can be created in an external software application of choice and ''Impressive'' used for displaying them. ''Impressive'' features a timer, multi-monitor setups and fully customizable keyboard and mouse controls, with an optimal keyboard, computer mouse and

digital pen A digital pen is an input device which captures the handwriting or brush strokes of a user and converts handwritten analog information created using "pen and paper" into digital data, enabling the data to be utilized in various applications. This ...

input handling. Impressive can be used to present

JPG JPEG ( ) is a commonly used method of lossy compression for digital images, particularly for those images produced by digital photography. The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and image ...

based photographic albums and in generall full sets of documentation in open source or copy-left formats with older or low power computer hardware and from the console. Basic features of the software are smooth alpha-blended slide transitions and an overview function. The overview screen, available anytime by clicking a key, reveals a thumbnail grid of all slide-pages. One can select a specific page, click on it, and zoom it back in to the presentation screen. Highlight boxes help direct the focus of attention of the audience on a specific part of the current slide by dragging a rectangle on the screen while holding down the left mouse button. With the exception of the selected rectangle, the presentation screen greys out and gets blurry. Multiple highlight boxes per slide are possible, and slides containing highlit boxes can be saved for future reuse. Spotlight effects deliver dynamic highlighting effects. Controlled by a special key a highlighting circle will appear and follow the mouse cursor as it moves over the slide.

Program

Impressive is written in the

Python Python may refer to: Snakes * Pythonidae, a family of nonvenomous snakes found in Africa, Asia, and Australia ** ''Python'' (genus), a genus of Pythonidae found in Africa and Asia * Python (mythology), a mythical serpent Computing * Python (pro ...

programming language, and

PyGame Pygame is a cross-platform set of Python modules designed for writing video games. It includes computer graphics and sound libraries designed to be used with the Python programming language. History Pygame was originally written by Pete Shinners ...

is used as the windowing

API An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software Interface (computing), interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standa ...

. Its intended

user interface In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine f ...

is the

command-line A command-line interpreter or command-line processor uses a command-line interface (CLI) to receive commands from a user in the form of lines of text. This provides a means of setting parameters for the environment, invoking executables and pro ...

. The computer graphics rendering of

document slides is delivered by

Xpdf Xpdf is a free and open-source PDF viewer for operating systems supported by the Qt toolkit. Versions prior to 4.00 were written for the X Window System and Motif. Functions Xpdf runs on nearly any Unix-like operating system. Binaries are als ...

MuPDF MuPDF is a free and open-source software framework written in C that implements a PDF, XPS, and EPUB parsing and rendering engine. It is used primarily to render pages into bitmaps, but also provides support for other operations such as searchi ...

Ghostscript Ghostscript is a suite of software based on an interpreter for Adobe Systems' PostScript and Portable Document Format (PDF) page description languages. Its main purposes are the rasterization or rendering of such page description language files, ...

OpenGL OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) is a cross-language, cross-platform application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D and 3D vector graphics. The API is typically used to interact with a graphics processing unit (GPU), to achieve hardwa ...

is used by ''Impressive'' for

hardware acceleration Hardware acceleration is the use of computer hardware designed to perform specific functions more efficiently when compared to software running on a general-purpose central processing unit (CPU). Any transformation of data that can be calcula ...

as a prerequisite for the graphical effects and various 'eye candy'. While hardware with

graphics processing unit A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit designed to manipulate and alter memory to accelerate the creation of images in a frame buffer intended for output to a display device. GPUs are used in embedded systems, mobi ...

s (GPU) supporting OpenGL 2.0 or OpenGL ES 2.0 are required, ''Impressive'' even runs on the

Raspberry Pi Raspberry Pi () is a series of small single-board computers (SBCs) developed in the United Kingdom by the Raspberry Pi Foundation in association with Broadcom. The Raspberry Pi project originally leaned towards the promotion of teaching basic ...

License

Impressive is

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

under the GNU General Public License version 2.0 (

GPLv2 The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general us ...

References

External links

* {{Presentation software 2005 software Unix software Console applications Portable software Free software programmed in Python Cross-platform free software Software using the GPL license Free PDF software Free presentation software