Sent Presentation Tool with RTL and PDF Support

A fork of fork of suckless sent minimal presentation tool with full Right-to-Left (RTL) language support and PDF export capabilities.

Features

• Original sent functionality: Lightweight, keyboard-driven presentations
• RTL language support: Full support for Persian, Arabic,Hebrew , and other RTL languages
• PDF export: Generate PDF versions of your presentations with a single keypress
• Enhanced font support: Pre-configured for optimal RTL text rendering with Vazirmatn and other fonts
• FriBiDi integration: Proper text shaping and bidirectional text rendering

Installation

Dependencies

# Ubuntu/Debian
sudo apt install libx11-dev libxft-dev libxinerama-dev libfribidi-dev libcairo2-dev libfreetype6-dev

# Fedora
sudo dnf install libX11-devel libXft-devel libXinerama-devel fribidi-devel cairo-devel freetype-devel

# Arch Linux
sudo pacman -S libx11 libxft libxinerama fribidi cairo freetype2

Building from Source

git clone https://github.com/muctebanesiri/sent.git
cd sent
make
sudo make install

Usage

Basic Presentation

sent presentation.txt

Fullscreen Mode

sent -f presentation.txt

Keyboard Controls

• Arrow keys: Navigate between slides
• Space/Enter: Next slide
• Backspace: Previous slide
• g: Generate PDF version
• r: Reload presentation file
• q: Quit
• F11: Toggle fullscreen

PDF Generation

Press g during your presentation to generate a PDF version. The PDF will be saved as [filename].pdf in the current directory.

RTL Language Support

This fork includes full support for Right-to-Left languages:

• Proper text rendering for Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, etc.
• FriBiDi library integration for bidirectional text support
• Pre-configured font fallbacks with Vazirmatn as the primary Arabic font

Customizing Fonts

Edit config.h to customize font preferences:

static char *fontfallbacks[] = {
	"Vazirmatn:style=Regular",
	"Noto Sans Arabic:style=Regular",
	"Aref Ruqaa:style=Bold",
	"iransansx",
	"roboto",
	"ubuntu",
};

Presentation Format

Sent uses a simple text format for presentations: see example file for more

# Slide 1 Title
Slide content
with multiple lines

# Slide 2 Title
More content
- With bullet points
- And more elements

Special Features

• Lines starting with # are treated as slide separators
• Lines starting with @ are treated as embedded images
• Use \\ to escape special characters

Customization

Modifying Key Bindings

Edit the shortcuts array in config.h:

static Shortcut shortcuts[] = {
	{ XK_Escape,      quit,           {0} },
	{ XK_g,           pdf,            {0} },
	// Add your custom shortcuts here
};

Changing Colors

Modify the colors array in config.h:

static const char *colors[] = {
	"#FFFFFF", /* foreground color */
	"#000000", /* background color */
};

Troubleshooting

Common Issues

1. Fonts not rendering correctly: Ensure required fonts are installed on your system
2. PDF generation fails: Verify Cairo library is properly installed
3. RTL text not displaying properly: Check FriBiDi library installation

Debug Mode

Compile with debug flags for troubleshooting:

make clean
make DEBUG=1

License

This project maintains the original sent license. See LICENSE file for details.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit pull requests or open issues for bugs and feature requests.

Acknowledgments

• Original sent developers for the excellent minimal presentation tool
• FriBiDi library for RTL text support
• Cairo library for PDF export capabilities
• Vazirmatn font developers for the beautiful Arabic typeface

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For more information, visit the original sent page or the GitHub repository.