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.
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:
Clicking on the toolbar handle results in that toolbar being ‘flattened’ so that you have some extra space for viewing the main editing window:
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:
If you don't like dragging toolbars around, right click on the handle and a menu pops up as shown in the screenshot below:
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 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:
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 KPresenter menus are discussed in the following sections.
- File->New (Ctrl+N)
Begins a new presentation. The Choose dialog will open, allowing you to choose a template for your presentation.
- File->Open (Ctrl+O)
Opens an existing presentation. A standard KDE file open dialog 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.
- File->Save (Ctrl+S)
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...
- File->Create HTML Slideshow...
Starts the HTML wizard, which is described in the section the section called “Using the HTML Wizard”.
- 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 the section called “Creating templates”.
- 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.
- File->Print... (Ctrl+P)
Prints the presentation. More precisely, it opens the print settings dialog, 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 documents contents.
- File->Close (Ctrl+W)
Close the current presentation. You will be given an opportunity to save any changes first.
- File->Quit (Ctrl+Q)
Close KPresenter. You will be given an opportunity to save all changes in all open presentations first.
