I had to make a presentation and I wondered if I should try using a zooming presentation editor – I usually don’t use them because most of the time I don’t need flashy visuals, and they can be quite distracting if your content doesn’t lend itself to a spatial metaphor. But this time was different.

However, I was faced with an obstacle. None of the major zooming presentation editors like Prezi (no relation to me despite the name! Though I worked together with one of their founders on a research project, Hungary is a small place…) or Ahead offer easy printing. Maybe there’s one which does, but I was in a hurry and didn’t find anything. Also, my laptop only has Linux, so Windows and (especially) Mac solutions like Keynote were also out.

I came up with a solution that worked quite well for my purposes, though it probably wouldn’t work for you if you expect full Prezi-like functionality like the rotating virtual camera, etc., and it only offers three levels of zoom, so I don’t claim it’s perfect. But since several people have been asking about it, here is the howto beyond the cut! Note that it assumes that you can make a regular presentation, and you have some computer proficiency. (If you have specific questions, comment away and I’ll do my best to answer!)

1. Make a slide background that is easily tiled

Since I needed to talk about four areas of interest in my presentation, I drew a petal-like shape and flipped it horizontally and vertically until I ended up with a “flower” composed of four separate slides fitting together. I filled the background with a uniform color.

2. Create your slides with OpenOffice Impress

Alternately, you can use any editor which outputs a PDF file with slides on separate pages. (LaTeX Beamer, etc.) Maybe you can even use Powerpoint – I confess have no idea whether Powerpoint can export to PDF (if you buy me a copy I can check, but it would be quite pointless to buy me a copy just for that, since I prefer Impress).

3. Download and set up Impress!ve (includes editing the source)

Impress!ve (formerly known as KeyJnote) is a  ~150kb Python script created by Martin J. Fiedler, we will be using this script to create the presentation. Its website explains how to download it and get it to run. I had some minor trouble with it – I ran into a bug where files exported from OpenOffice (but not from LaTeX) would crash it upon drawing the slide titles, I solved it simply by removing the reference to slide titles from the source code. Since the error message told me exactly which line was the culprit, it took just a few seconds to fix it. (If anyone is interested, I can try to replicate the bug, but it’s not too relevant here and strangely it only occurred on my laptop and nowhere else. I just mention it here for historical accuracy )

Now you will need to edit the source code (impressive.py). Don’t run away! It will not hurt!

…Seriously. You just need a text editor, any text editor will do, because the settings you will have to change are right at the top of the file. Open impressive.py. Right under the title and license information, there are a bunch of variables prefaced by this comment: # You may change the following lines to modify the default settings

Let OverviewBorder = 0 and OverviewLogoBorder = 0. (Maybe it is possible to change these settings using a command line parameter, but I didn’t find it in the documentation and just changing the Python script seemed easier.) Save, quit.

4. Configure your presentation

Configuration is very straightforward, but first you need to understand how the two zoom levels are set up. What we just did above means that the Impress!ve overview page (which is a feature that the script offers, it shows thumbnail images of each slide) does not have black borders any longer. So you can make a reasonably seamless image out of four (or more!) slides which fit together (which you made in sections 1-2 above). In my case I had four “petals” of a strange flowerlike thing for the four areas I intended to cover in my presentation. (If I end up having a lot of time at some unspecified point in the future, I might make a video and upload it to Youtube to make this explanation clearer.)

Of course there are slides you don’t want to see on the top-level zoom result, breaking your carefully crafted layout! You probably have a title slide, a bunch of extra slides and whatnot. To solve this, launch Impress!ve, go through your stack of slides, and use the “o” button on your keyboard to toggle “visible on overview”. In my case, each petal had several slides explaining the topic, and only the first slide of each topic was set to display on the overview. When you’re finished, press “s” to save your configuration! It will be loaded automatically when you start the presentation (unless you moved it to another directory).

So by now you should have the top-level zoom set up. You can trigger it with the Tab key during your presentation. Your medium-level zoom is the default, it just displays one slide on the screen.

What to do about the bottom-level zoom? This is also very straightforward. Impress!ve offers a zooming tool by pressing the “z” key. It zooms to where the cursor is positioned on the slide that is currently displayed. Also, if you press Tab while zoomed in, you will be moved to the top level in two steps, automatically and very smoothly. A further charming feature is triggered with Enter, “this is left as an exercise to the reader”

Make sure you don’t make the text overly small (resist the temptation of the zoom!), because after all, the whole purpose of this is to have slides which can be easily printed!

5. Print out the PDF

See, that was easy!

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To be honest, when I first tried this, I thought I would mix up Tab, Z, Enter and all that during my live presentation and it would go horribly wrong. But I did not do more test runs than with my usual plain vanilla OpenOffice presentations, and everything went without hitches.

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Ein großes Dankeschön to Martin J. Fiedler who made Impress!ve. Keep up the great work!