# Active-DVI
Reference manual
Version 2.0.0

### Didier Rémy and Pierre Weis

### 2026-07-06

> Active-DVI is a viewer for DVI files that also recognizes a new class of \special’s targeted to presentations via laptop computers: various visual effects can easily be incorporated to the presentation, via a companion advi.sty LATEX package.

> Active-DVI is copyright ©2001–2021,2021 INRIA and distributed under the Gnu Library General Public License —see the LGPL file included in the distribution.

> Active-DVI is available at https://github.com/diremy/advi. This documentation and additional information are available at http://advi.inria.fr/.

> This manual is available as a a single or several HTML files, or in PDF format.

- Acknowledgments and contributors
- Contents
- Installation
  - Installation of the advi executable
  - Installation of the advi LATEX source files
  - Rebuilding the documentation
  - Tests and examples
- Active-DVI for the impatient
- Safety concerns when using the Active-DVI previewer
- Initialization files for Active-DVI
  - Syntax of initialization files
  - Loading initialization files
  - Automatic setting of options
- Using the Active-DVI presenter
  - Launching Active-DVI
  - Command line options
  - Cut and paste
  - Hyper-text references
  - Floating table of contents and thumbnails
  - Moving around
  - Scratching on slides
  - Using the laser pointer
  - Saving slides
  - Creating events from the LATEX source file
  - Using and making special effects
  - Viewing multiple files simultaneously
- The advi.sty LATEX package
  - Printing the presentation
  - Pauses
  - Active-DVI records
  - Active-DVI anchors
  - Images
  - Colors
  - Background
  - Transitions
  - Embedded applications
  - Active anchors
  - Postscript specials
- The advi-slides.sty LATEX package
- Auxiliary LATEX packages
  - The superpose package
  - The bubble package
  - The advi-annot package
  - The advi-graphicx LATEX package
- Limitations
  - Postscript Fonts
  - In-lined Postscript and Ghostscript
  - In-lined Postscript change of coordinates
- Reporting bugs
- Key bindings
  - Survival command kit
  - Moving between pages
  - Moving between pauses
  - Adjusting the page size
  - Moving the page in the window
  - Switching views
  - Redisplay commands
  - Using the navigation history stack
  - Table of contents
  - Writing and drawing on the page
  - Using the laser pointer
  - Saving the current page
  - Dealing with caches
- Key bindings for scratch writings
  - Entering scratch writing mode
  - Survival command kit when scratch writing
  - Scratch writing settings mode keys
  - Setting the scratching font size
- Key bindings for scratch drawings
  - Entering scratch drawing mode
  - Survival command kit when scratch drawing
  - Scratch drawing settings mode keys
- Index