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My pdf reader (evince) supports dual display, i.e pages are not shown consecutively but 2 in a row:

slide 1 | slide 2
slide 3 | slide 4

Use case: I'm viewing a PDF with a slide on each page and the best fit would be to watch 3x2 pages (slides) at once.

slide 1 | slide 2 | slide 3
slide 4 | slide 5 | slide 6

Is there a reader, preferably for linux, that supports this?

Long story short:
yes there is: qpdfview
for windows @Timmy recommends Foxit
depending on your nerves printing and rotating your screen is an option, thanks again to @Timmy for his efforts.

Progress:

@Timmy suggests printing to file with 6 original pages per new page.

I link to this as a sample document since it's the first google result for 'latex beamer example'. In case the link dies, any slide with ratio 4:3 will do.

With evince, I tried:

result: enter image description here

The slides overlap and there's plenty of empty space(select image to see better)

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  • 3x2 pages > On which monitor would each of those six pages be displayed? Oct 30, 2014 at 15:15
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    @FranckDernoncourt all 6 pages are to be displayed on the same monitor!
    – user2740
    Oct 30, 2014 at 16:36
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    I don't think there is a viewer with that functionality. So would it be convenient to use a virtual printer to "print" your document into another pdf file that has 6 pages per "sheet"? It's rather common for presentation handouts, but you'd be printing to pdf instead of paper.
    – Tymric
    Oct 30, 2014 at 21:23
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    @Timmy This is a good idea! I just tried it but I don't get it to work: With Evince, I get overlapping slides and a huge margin between the rows. Can anyone report an application and exact printing parameters for this task?
    – user2740
    Oct 31, 2014 at 0:21
  • You just need to choose a suitable paper type depending on the dimensions of your slides and increase the scale to crop out the margins. Try selecting a size with longer length and smaller width since you are printing from 1x1 to 3x2 slides per page. It would help if you could post a link to a sample document so we could test it
    – Tymric
    Oct 31, 2014 at 0:39

2 Answers 2

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There doesn't seem to be an editor with such a viewing option, but there may be workarounds through the PDF printer.

After going through the page sizes in the print options on Evince, there were a couple that didn't produce overlap, namely c and e. Also make sure to uncheck both options under Page Handling and select Fit to Printable Area for the page scaling.

The resulting documents has 6 slides that do not overlap. They do, however, have large spaces between the rows due to the fact that (4x3) * (3x2) = 12x6 = 1x2, which is not a common ratio you'd find on normal papers, and printing on an envelope paper resulted in very small pages. Also, because Evince does not have an "Auto Center" option. Okular had the same issue as well.

I would recommend rotating your screen 90 degrees and printing them in a vertical orientation instead, since it highly reduces the white space, even on a regular A4 paper (Edit) and using dual view to display 6 slides in a 2x3 view

Click each image to enlarge


Edit: I tried the printing it with Foxit Reader on Windows and there was no extra white space between the rows. Unfortunately, I couldn't get the linux setup to work:

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    space between rows is unacceptable since I'm already able to view 2x2 via 'dual'-option. So seeing only 3 full slides and 3 headers would be a step back. Rotating and viewing 2x3 is a good hack, this way no printing is needed due to dual-option. A way to print it close-fitting 3x2 would be nice though...
    – user2740
    Nov 1, 2014 at 20:42
  • @user2740 A 3x2 close-fit printing works with Foxit Reader, but I could only test it on Windows. I also updated the answer with your dual-view rotated screen idea
    – Tymric
    Nov 1, 2014 at 20:57
  • @user2740 but even with that, you'd still get a larger slide view with a rotated screen, unless you have one of those really wide monitors :)
    – Tymric
    Nov 1, 2014 at 21:11
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qpdfview offers "multipage"-view, which does display 3 pages in a row. Note that viewcontinuous needs to be selected as well for comfortable viewing.

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