Animations in pdfTeX-generated PDF

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Authors	HOLEČEK Jan SOJKA Petr
Year of publication	2004
Type	Article in Periodical
Magazine / Source	Lecture Notes in Computer Science
MU Faculty or unit	Faculty of Informatics
Citation
web	author's publication page with further details Publisher (Springer) page with full PDF version of paper
Field	Computer hardware and software
Keywords	animation; PDF; pdfTeX; digital typography
Description	This paper presents a new approach for creating animations in Portable Document Format (PDF). The method of animation authoring described uses free software (pdfTeX) only. The animations are viewable by any viewer that supports at least some features of Acrobat JavaScript, particularly Adobe (Acrobat) Reader, which is available at no cost for a wide variety of platforms. Furthermore, the capabilities of PDF make it possible to have a single file with animations both for interactive viewing and printing. The paper explains the principles of PDF, Acrobat JavaScript and pdfTeX needed to create animations for Adobe Reader using no other software except pdfTeX. We present a step by step explanation of animation preparation, together with sample code, using a literate programming style. Finally, we discuss other possibilities of embedding animations into documents using open standards (SVG) and free tools, and conclude with their strengths and weaknesses with respect to the method presented.
Related projects:	Human-computer interaction, dialog systems and assistive technologies