As mentioned above, I use powerdot for generating overhead presentations in PDF format from LaTeX source. In this section, I describe how I make clickable sound links in PDF presentations.
The LATEX macro invocation
\soundexamplewav{Bb Clarinet}{bcq705}creates a link ``Bb Clarinet'' in the PDF which plays the soundfile bcq705.wav. The macro
\soundexamplewav
is defined as\newcommand{\soundexamplewav}[2]{\href{\playcmd \wavpath{#2}}{#1}}and
\newcommand{\wavpath}[1]{\soundpathroot/wav/#1.wav}where, for Web documents, I use
\newcommand{\playcmd}{} % just use a bare URL, no ``command'' \newcommand{\soundpathroot}[1]{http://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jos/}while for on-the-road, self-contained laptop presentations, I use instead
\newcommand{\soundpathroot}[1]{..} \newcommand{\playcmd}{run:} % Windows PDF %\newcommand{\playcmd}{run:play } % Linux PDFThese PDF soundfile links are just like media links in HTML Web pages: The application registered for ``.wav'' files is launched to play the sound in the usual way when you click on the link. Therefore, it is good to find a sound-player that does not insist on bringing a window to the foreground, since that distracts from the full-screen presentation mode. For windows, I find WinAmp (any version) to be perfect for this purpose. For Linux, in Firefox, go to Edit / Preferences, select the Content tab, select ``File Types .. Manage...'', and set your soundfile handler there (e.g., a shell script that invokes the play command installed by sox).