JTabletPresenter

(If you are not interested, skip to [Installation]) JTabletPresenter was developed by Lukas Vögtle for a lecture on university, where the lecturer was unhappy with the quality of existing commercial products as presentation tools. Its aim is to make a simple way for the lecturer to write on a "whiteboard" using the digital pen and export the result as pdf to provide it to the students.

Later on, support for rendering PDFs and storing the annotations was added. In addition an experimental feature for live streaming modifications was successfully tested in a lecture.

The tool has capabilities to upload live annotations to a server, which students may connect to using the client to add live private annotations. Read More in [IntroductionAndPurpose].

Features

• Draw directly on screen using a digital pen or mouse
• Supports digital pen detection
• Serialize current editing state in internal format to continue editing later
• Undo-Redo (History)
• Quick-Tool-Panel (large buttons for usage with digital pen)
• Open and draw on PDFs
• Serialize as PDF
• (global) Shortcuts
• Screenshots, adding images
• (experimental) Live stream to server

Installation

1. Download the latest release
2. Simply unpack the archive and run the JTabletPresenter.jar file.

Hints

Windows

If you have Java installed, it should be possible to directly run the .jar file.

If you want to use the .bat files, the PATH environment variable must be set correctly for javaw.exe. (Computer -> Properties -> Advanced System Settings -> Advanced -> Environment Variables -> Under System Variables search for "Path" and add ";<Path to java bin>")

Linux

If you have a Java Runtime installed, everything should work without problems. The jar can be started via start.sh (adds "." to the searchpath for native libraries).

On some machines it is required to copy the libfreetype.so.* to the binary directory as libfreetype.so.

Default configuration

Intention

The default config file is designed for presentation using digital pens.

Key Features

• Designed for 4:3 aspect ratio, 1024x768 (default presentations)
• Intentional coloring (darkened default colors for better readability)
• Uses JMuPdf renderer (has better support)
• Autosaving for each page and on exit
• Default saving/loading as PDF (unfortunately the internal format is not desired by most users though it would be much more practicable :( )
• No networking
• Intentional shortcuts:
  • open/save (Ctrl+O/S)
  • next page (N, Space, Page Up, Right, Down)
  • previous page (P, Page Down, Left, Up)
  • undo/redo (ctrl+Z/Y)
  • toggle fullscreen + toolbar (F1, Escape)
  • toggle toolbar (F2)
  • show color square (C)
  • use scribble/eraser/line/image tool as primary (1/2/3/4)
  • take screenshot of an area and use image tool once (ctrl print )
  • take screenshot and set it as current page background (ctrl shift print )

Configuration

The config.ini file has a simple format:

• Comments start with # (Hash)
• Key-Value pair consists of: \w*([a-zA-Z.])\w*=\w*(.*)\w* where \1 is the key and \2 is the value.

Configuration Variables

Following variables are shown as

• Variable (variable type, default value if not specified): Description

Editor

• editor.variableThickness (boolean, false): If true and a real pen is used, the pressure of the pen is used for drawing.
• editor.voidColor (color, FF000000): Background color for void space (outside of aspect ratio clipping)
• editor.eraser.thickness (float, 15.0): Thickness (radius) of the eraser
• editor.eraser.fastCollide (boolean, true): If true, a fast collision algorithm will be used for erasing (only erase vertexes), otherwise line segments can be partially erased
• editor.selectMove.thickness (float, 1.0): Thickness of the select-move-tool borders
• editor.defaultPen.thickness (float, 1.0): Thickness of the pen
• editor.defaultPen.color (Color, FF000000): Color of the pen
• editor.scribble.drawThreshold (float, 0.0): The Threshold, at which drawing will start. Can be used to prevent squiggles.
• editor.screenshot.hideDelay (float, 0.2): Time in sec to wait for taking the screenshot after hiding the window (to skip the hiding animation).
• editor.image.lockRatio (boolean, false): If true and if the document uses a fixed ratio, the ratio of images is kept fixed when drawing.
• editor.stroke.screenAdapt (boolean, true): If true, then the stroke width will adapt the screen size. Otherwise the stroke width is pixel based.
• editor.stroke.baseThickness (float, 0.004): Specifies the ratio of the stroke to screen in [0,1]

Document

• document.background.color (color, FFFFFFFF): Background color for the whole document
• document.useDefaultRatio (boolean, false): If true, use the default ratio for pages (see document.defaultRatio and pdf.useRatio)
• document.defaultRatio (float, 4.0/3.0): If using default ratio (see document.useDefaultRatio), this specifies the ratio (width/height)

PDF

• pdf.renderer (int, 0): Specifies the PDF renderer (0: JPod, 1: JMuPDF)
• pdf.useRatio (boolean, false): If true, for PDF pages the ratio of the PDF page is used (overrides document.useDefaultRatio)
• pdf.defaultWidth, pdf.defaultHeight (int, 1024x768): Default PDF width/height for exporting as PDF if there is no PDF page set for the rendered page
• pdf.ignoreEmptyPages (boolean, false): If true, empty pages won't be exported to PDF
• pdf.showPageNumber (boolean, true): If true, the page number is printed on the lower right on PDFs
• pdf.ignoreEmptyPageNumber (boolean, true): If true and empty pages are printed (pdf.ignoreEmptyPages) these won't have page numbers
• pdf.ignorePdfPageNumber (boolean, true): If true and pages with PDF content won't have page numbers
• pdf.thicknessFactor (float, 0.2): The factor for line thickness for rendering to PDF

General

• color.nine, (boolean, true): If true, the color-square shows nine colors, otherwise only four (red, gree, blue, black)
• color.*, (Color): Color values for the color-square selected colors to tune for presenters (possible colors: red, gree, blue, black, orange, violet, yellow, grey, white).
• fullscreen.autotoggleToolbar (boolean, true): If true, the toolbar is hidden when changing into fullscreen and shown when switching to windowed mode
• fullscreen.autotoggleAutoToolbar (boolean, true): If true, the auto-toolbar is shown when changing into fullscreen and hidden when switching to windowed mode
• thickness.thin, thickness.medium, thickness.thick (float, 1.0, 2.0, 3.0): Default base thicknesses possible to select.

Save/Load

• autosave.next, autosave.previous, autosave.spinner (boolean, true): If true, the current page will be autosaved on next/previous/spinner selected page
• autosave.saveExit (boolean, false): If true, the current session is autosaved as session.dat (see autosave.loadStartup)
• autosave.loadStartup (boolean, false): If true, the autosaved session.dat is loaded on startup (see autosave.saveExit)
• save.defaultExt, open.defaultExt (string, jpd): Default selected extension for the save/open-dialog
• file.dialog.saveLocation (boolean, false): If true, the last location of saving/loading dialog will be remembered (see file.dialog.location)
• file.dialog.location (string, empty): If the location is saved (see * * file.dialog.saveLocation), then this stores the last location.

Shortcuts

shortcut.<action>.*: Configures the shortcuts for an action (see below). Multiple shortcuts can be defined for the same action by adding a different name for * (same names overwrite previous definitions).

shortcut.<action>.global.*: Defines the shortcut as a global shortcut.

Possible key strokes are defined in KeyStroke#getKeyStroke(java.lang.String).

Primary purpose is the screenshot tool.

Toolbar

The (dynamic) toolbar is separate from the fixed toolbar. This toolbar automatically shows when hovering over it and hides when leaving it. The buttons present in the toolbar can be configured by:

• toolbar.orientation (enum, NONE): One of LEFT, RIGHT, TOP, BOTTOM, NONE (disables the toolbar)
• toolbar.compactSize (integer, 15): Size when the toolbar is not hovered
• toolbar.compactOpacity (float, 0.25): Opacity when the toolbar is not hovered
• toolbar.* (action): Creates a toolbar action button. Value is one of the actions (see below). This also adds a "space" and "fill" value to modify spacing.

Actions

• tools.new: New Document
• tools.open: Open file dialog
• tools.save: Save file dialog
• tools.primary.scribble: Select scribble tool as primary tool
• tools.primary.eraser: Select eraser tool as primary tool
• tools.primary.deleter: Select deleter tool as primary tool
• tools.primary.image: Select image tool as primary tool
• tools.primary.selectMove: Select selectMove tool as primary tool
• tools.secondary.scribble: Select scribble tool as primary tool
• tools.secondary.eraser: Select eraser tool as primary tool
• tools.secondary.deleter: Select deleter tool as primary tool
• tools.secondary.image: Select image tool as primary tool
• tools.secondary.selectMove: Select selectMove tool as primary tool
• tools.page.new: Create new page
• tools.page.clone: Clone current page
• tools.page.delete: Delete current page
• tools.page.clear: Clear current page
• tools.document.new: New Document (clear all)
• tools.document.clearPdf: Clear the background PDF
• tools.document.openPdf: Open a PDF for the background
• tools.screenshotAreaHide: Take a screenshot of an area of the screen with hiding the window and use the image tool
• tools.screenshotArea: Take a screenshot of an area of the screen and use the image tool
• tools.screenshotFull: Take a screenshot of a selectable screen and set as page background
• tools.screenshotDirect: Take a screenshot of the screen under the cursor and set as page background
• tools.blankScreen: Blanks the screen containing the main window
• tools.blankScreenAll: Blanks all screens
• tools.toggleToolbar: Toggle the toolbar
• tools.toggleAutoToolbar: Toggle the auto-toolbar
• next: Next page
• previous: Previous page
• undo: Undo
• redo: Redo
• toggleFullscreen: Toggle fullscreen
• color: Show color square

Network streaming

The idea behind this is to allow a lecturer to draw on the screen and allow students to add notes on their private file. To allow this, the data on the lecturers screen is streamed to a server (write-only), that distributes the current state to its clients (read-only). It is possible at any time to connect to the server.

This feature is still experimental, but was tested on a lecture (about 20 hours of running), where it did never crash. If you plan to use this feature, please contact me directly.