Impress multiple display support

Impress Multiple Display Support

This is the current status of the implementation of Impress simple multiple display specification for issue 12719.

For Developers Only

There is a patch available on the bug which will enable using a different monitor on Windows inside vcl. If somebody desperately needs this functionality, they could possibly start from there and produce a build that has no user interface to control the output, but always shows the presentation on the secondary display. Note that no such build currently exists...

There are some stabs at patches for a UI, but that needs more specification work.

For Users

There is no end-user functionality available for this feature yet

Workarounds

Windows

You can dispay presentations on a different monitor wihtout requiring Microsoft Office by combining Microsoft's free-as-in-beer PowerPoint Viewer and multimon.

• Download PowerPoint viewer from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=428d5727-43ab-4f24-90b7-a94784af71a4&displaylang=en (or search for PowerPoint viewer if that no longer works) and install
• Download multimon from http://www.mediachance.com/free/multimon.htm and install
• Start multimon
• Right click on the multimon task bar (that appears on the secondary display), and select Properties
• Tick "Auto Hide" and "Use Ctrl-Alt Arrows", and untick "Insert Caption Button" and "Add Multi-Text Clipboard"
• Start PowerPoint viewer and select the presentation. It will appear on the primary screen
• With the presentation window focused (in the foreground), press Ctrl-Alt-Right and it will move to the secondary display
• You can then proceed as normal.

Note: The multimon web page says Ctrl-Shift, but its Ctrl-Alt. Ctrl-Alt-Left will move it back.

Linux / Unix

There are some workarounds on the bug mentioned above on Linux that enable you to cunningly reposition the presentation on the secondary display.