Two weeks later and zero replies. Perhaps most FreeBSD users are too shy to give presentations? :r
Regardless, I just went ahead and bought one anyway. I figured if I couldn't make it work with FreeBSD there'd still be a Windows computer in pretty much every lecture hall.
My favourite hardware shop had a Trust Preme (
clicky) on sale for 25 euros. It can be used as a true presenter or as a wireless mouse (I wouldn't, but it's possible) and features a laser pointer. It doesn't require any additional software (drivers), so I was optimistic about my chances of getting it to work with FreeBSD.
After having verified on a Windows machine that the device itself works properly, I plugged it into a FreeBSD machine, fired up a LaTeX+Beamer presentation in both
graphics/xpdf and
graphics/epdfview as well as a Powerpoint presentation in
editors/openoffice.org-3 Impress. The monkey then started pushing the buttons and I can report that it works:
- The laser doesn't interact with a computer, so suffice it to say it works
- In mouse mode, it's automagically recognised as a (2-button) USB mouse and it works perfectly.
- In presenter mode, the number of buttons recognised differs per viewer, but the forward and back buttons (which are by far the most important) work just fine with all of them.
Moral of the story: as long as it's plug&pray, chances are good that a wireless presenter works with FreeBSD - without any effort. Mine sure does.
Fonz
