GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 309364
Not obvious how to get out of presentation mode
Last modified: 2018-05-22 13:02:25 UTC
If you open a pdf that starts up in presentation mode, it is not at all obvious how to get out of the presentation mode, possibly a right click menu offering the option to leave would be better, otherwise it seems you need to know that Escape and F12 exit the mode. It is also slightly odd for it to open in presentation mode by default if you aren't expecting it.
We also have request for left button to move forward, right to move backward :) See comment 12 on bug 170874
Bryan?
I can see the problem when the pdf opens up automatically into presentation mode. However I'd kind of like to see this solved in a different way than a right click menu. Like a splash screen that goes away quickly with a hint on hitting [ESC] to get out of presentation mode. Really the idea I like is a little display the way Apple overlays the volume meter on the screen as the presentation is opened and shows you how to interact with it. That's just off the top of my head, not sure it's a good idea.
I tend to think that the present behavior is preferable to either a splash screen or right click option. Evince is consistent with acroread and kpdf, which counts for something. Once one has done more than zero presentations using a pdf viewer, escape is the natural choice for exiting presentation mode. Adding any splash screen increases the number of distractions the audience faces. One thought: when viewing a presentation in powerpoint, escape is the standard way of exiting the presentation unless you get to the last page. However, at the end of the presentation powerpoint shows a blank page with the words "click to exit" or something. Perhaps evince could have a little note either on the last slide or on a black screen after the last slide indicating that clicking (or pagedown) exits presentation mode. A simplification of this would be to exit presentation mode if the "change slide " signal is recieved but we are at the end of the presentation.
There's a note after the last page in presentation mode that tells you to hit escape to quit.
I have an Openmoko Freerunner phone. Evince is a great PDF viewer for this device (love it on the lectures :) too but using the presentation mode one is trapped with the touch screen: It's not possible to press ESC to exit the presentation since no keyboard is visible. So I suggest that a mouse click (the only action you can do with a touch screen!) would make it possible to close the presentation mode. Now I only can SSH in the phone to kill evince or hold down the power button to shutdown.
See also bug 571051#c11.
*** Bug 577762 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
If you're going to make http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=577762 a duplicate of this bug, may I humbly suggest that you raise both the severity and the priority at the same time? An application that requires a reboot to undo a menu entry selection is not a minor problem.
Sure Roger.
As an aside, it would be nice if F5 could *toggle* presentation mode instead of just activating it. I just found myself entering presentation mode via F5 and then pressing F5 a few more times before I realized that I cannot exit this way. And it took me a short while to think of using Esc. A second suggestion would be to exit the presentation when the user keeps going forward after the last (black) page which says "End of presentation. Press Escape to exit.". This would provide users lacking a keyboard with a way of exiting by mouse. Maybe the text could be altered to "Click or press Escape to exit." or "Press Escape or step forward to exit." or something along these lines. Thanks for a very nice program, by the way!
> F5 could *toggle* that sounds wise, F11 behaves that way for full screen in most applications, it should be a relatively unintrusive change. I hope the developers will consider this. something else to consider might be to autohide menus/controls (or even just a close button) and have it appear if the user moves to the edge or corner of the screen.
Now (git master) it's possible to exit presentation by clicking on end page. http://git.gnome.org/browse/evince/commit/?id=1029127ee35060b39fe1972b5ecf19db86f3189d
Created attachment 270620 [details] [review] Here is a patch that helps to toggle from presentation mode to exit it when F5 is pressed while in presentation mode. Is it a good idea to add a right-click menu to add "exit presentation" option? As right-click is presently being used for moving to the previous slide. Or a close button or maybe an auto hide close button at the top right corner sounds good?
Review of attachment 270620 [details] [review]: It makes sense, thanks.
I think we can close this bug now.
(In reply to comment #16) > I think we can close this bug now. No, it does not because introduces a regression. In the past F5 used to toggle presentation mode, but it was disabled in 2008 because of: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=556162
I'm sorry I had forgotten that bug, I'll revert the commit and add a comment in the code pointing to the bug, so that I won't forget again in 6 years.
-- GitLab Migration Automatic Message -- This bug has been migrated to GNOME's GitLab instance and has been closed from further activity. You can subscribe and participate further through the new bug through this link to our GitLab instance: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/evince/issues/9.