How a page arrives, and how long it stands

In plain words

Written for anybody. It says what this puts on a sheet of paper, and asks nothing of you beyond that.

You have seen it in a meeting room: a slide wipes away, another slides in from the side, a third opens like a pair of shutters. That is what this settles, page by page. You say how a page arrives — sliding, dissolving, opening in two — and how many seconds it stands before the next one comes by itself. It only happens when the document is shown full screen; printed, or read in a window, none of it changes anything. A page you say nothing about simply appears when the reader turns to it.

For a developer

Written for somebody who writes the calling program: the model, the units, and the settings that carry the weight.

Written at the top level of a request, under "page_shows"

page_shows states, page by page, how the page arrives and how long it stands when a reader shows the document full screen. arrives carries the effect and how many seconds the effect itself takes; stands is how long the page is left before the next arrives by itself, and absent leaves the page standing until the reader turns it. Both are the presentation the standard defines, so a reader that has no full-screen mode ignores them and shows the pages plainly. A page named twice takes the last entry given for it, whole.

Every key, with its default

The reference: which keys are required, which are optional, what each one defaults to and which combinations the server declines.

• page_shows — array, optional, empty by default.
• page_shows[].page — integer, required, counting from 1. The page the entry is for.
• page_shows[].arrives — object, optional. How the page arrives. Absent, the reader turns to it with no effect at all.
• page_shows[].arrives.effect — object, required as soon as arrives is present. One effect among those the standard names: split, blinds, box, wipe, dissolve, glitter, fly, push, cover, uncover, fade. Each carries what it needs — an axis (horizontal or vertical), a motion (inward or outward), a heading in degrees.
• page_shows[].arrives.seconds — number, optional. How long the effect itself lasts.
• page_shows[].stands — number, optional. How many seconds the page stands before the next arrives by itself. Absent, the page stands until the reader turns it.

Scope: the pages named, and them alone. Nothing here changes what is printed or what a page holds — only the way a reader showing the document full screen moves from one page to the next.

A whole request that draws it

Post this as it stands and a PDF comes back. Nothing has been left out of it.

{
  "standard_fonts": [{ "name": "sans", "face": "helvetica" }],
  "page_shows": [
    { "page": 1, "stands": 4 },
    {
      "page": 2,
      "arrives": {
        "effect": { "split": { "axis": "vertical", "motion": "outward" } },
        "seconds": 1
      },
      "stands": 4
    }
  ],
  "items": [
    {
      "type": "text",
      "rect": { "llx": 72, "lly": 500, "urx": 523, "ury": 560 },
      "content": ["First slide"],
      "font": "sans",
      "font_size": 28
    },
    {
      "type": "text",
      "rect": { "llx": 72, "lly": 500, "urx": 523, "ury": 560 },
      "content": ["Second slide"],
      "font": "sans",
      "font_size": 28,
      "pages": [2]
    }
  ]
}

The line that sends it, in three languages

Glossary

standard

A rule argued out in committee, published under a number anybody may buy and read, and identical for every firm claiming it. A claim to follow one can therefore be checked against the text. A way of working that merely spread because it worked is a habit of the trade: useful, widespread, and answerable to no text at all.

Every word the site explains