(mgp-users 00059) Re: report

[Luigi Rizzo <luigi@labinfo.iet.unipi.it>]

> one thing is that the screen saver should be temporarily
right...
> disabled during the presentation. in my case it came up
> (i use xscreensaver), and i had to quit nd restart the
> presentation. since i had the -t option, that is not too nice.
> apparently, the mouse movement or keys would not affect the screen
> saver (they were grabbed by mgp already perhaps?).

but this is strange, in my case they do affect the screen saver
(i am getting used to "tickle" machines every now and then... my ppp
link tends to go off after 2 minutes and when i read long web pages the
thing hits me often.)

> the other thing is that since the slides are not numbered,
> it is hard to go back to the original slide before i quit
> (specially if the presentation is long).

they are not numbered, but they are titled and i think this is more
informative than numbers (when you press CTRL_ and move on the list of
pages you see the titles in the line above).

> finally, it seems like mgp actually can resize fonts at
> any size (e.g. -g 800x600), but sometimes, i find that for the sizes
> given by mgp (1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7... i.e. integers), i need something

this is a long standing problem which was only partly alleviated by
truetype fonts.

The problem is especially bad at small char sizes, where changing font
size by 1pixel up or down can make a huge difference. I think we should
really implement a set of "allowed" char sizes and the presentation
should map high-level specifications (e.g. \normalsize, \small,
\large... to recall the latex equivalent) into those sizes depending on
the actual geometry.

The problem is that the "nice-looking" sizes might depend on the actual
font... something to think about.

One more thing: the way it is now, mgp is a bit too strict in looking
for fonts directories or files. E.g. the "tfdir" is only in one place,
which makes presentation files slightly less portable from one system
to another (yes i know tfdir is only allowed in .mgprc but still...)
and also, when (with non-scalable fonts)
a font size is not available, mgp not only does not complain loudly on
stderr (A Good Thing), but it also does not show the offending text
instead of using a fallback font size. This, er... can be embarassing
during a live presentation...

   SPKR: (proudly looking at the audience after clicking on the spacebar
	"and on this slide you see our main result"
   AUDIENCE(laughing...)  "hey, it's blank"

The reason i am particularly concerned about this is that when using
mgp with our multicast extensions one cannot assume that every receiver
has fonts set up correctly.

	cheers
	luigi
Besides -- the way it is now, mgo
> in between, say 3 and 4 --- bt 3.5 does not work. is there any way to
> specify sizes other than integers? like 3pt 12pt, 15px (pixel).... etc?
> 
> thanks,
> 
> --carlos
> 
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