What is Ardesia?

Ardesia is the free digital sketchpad software that help you to make coloured free-hand annotations with digital ink everywhere, record it and share on the network. It is easy to use and impressively fast and reactive. You can draw upon the desktop or import an image, annotate it and redistribute your work to the world.

Thanks to Ardesia you are free to open any application and fix your ideas and comments as if you are writing on a classic chalkboard. Tradition and innovation are living together in simplicity thanks to a natural user interface that reproduce the natural feeling of the free hand painting. Reduce the traditional whiteboard and paper usage; Ardesia is smooth and fuzzy!

To get a better idea about what Ardesia is before install it let's see the screenshoot and the screencast.

What can I do with Ardesia?

You can use the tool to make effective on-screen presentations, highlight things or point out things of interest. The tool facilitates the online presentations and demos showing in real time your computer screen to anyone in the network.

You can use this tool to enhance your lessons or courses working with your preferred applications and your preferred operating system.

Create nice tutorials and demos saving the desktop images with your free hand annotations.

Ardesia includes a sketchpad software that allow to free-hand draw geometrical shapes using the shape recognizer.

What does "Ardesia" mean?

Ardesia is the italian name used for the slate.

The slate is the sedimentary rock used to build the blackboard.

The Ardesia name derives from Ardennes, a department in the northeast part of France with extensive forests. In this site was born one of the first extractive industries for the slate production.

Where can I buy Ardesia?

Ardesia is free as speech and free as beer; no money is required.

You can make a donation to support the project also.

What License is Ardesia released under?

GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE Version 3.

In a not legal term this means that you are free to use and distribute Ardesia for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial, without any restrictions.

You are also free to modify the program as you wish, but if you distribute the modified version, you must provide access to the source code of the distributed version.

What platforms does Ardesia run on?

We provide a binary package for Ubuntu and one for Windows. The Windows package run on Windows Vista and Windows 7 only; Windows Xp and the previous Windows version are not supported.

We know that Ardesia is successfully used on other Linux flavours, FreeBSD and other Unix-like operating systems with a composite manager.

You can found more info here.

In the future Ardesia could be available for MacosX.

Which input devices are supported?

Ardesia works with all the pointing device; you can use a mouse, a touch screen, a drawing tablet, a cheap&professional wiimote whiteboard or a commercial whiteboard or any other devices supported by your operating system.

Ardesia is designed to be used with the finger or a pen.

To have the best experience with Ardesia please use a tabletpc, a touch screen, a drawing tablet or an electronic whiteboard. You can also try Ardesia with the mouse.

If you're curious how to setup an electronic whiteboard with a projector and a wiimote please read the wiimote wiki page.

If you are interested about the drawing tablet, tabletpc and wacom support see this wiki page

What file can I read and write with Ardesia?

Ardesia respects the interoperability standards, it imports and exports artifacts using common file open formats.

Now Ardesia can import many common format such as tiff, jpeg, png and giff. You can export in the png format or create a pdf.

Ardesia is able to save and reopen your work in the Interactive Whiteboard Common File Format (iwb). You can save the screencast in the patent free ogg-vorbis/theora video format or stream it on a free icecast streaming server.

What is the iwb format?

The iwb is an open format for the interactive whiteboard proposed by Becta in a European project that promotes Open Source, Open Standards and Re–Use.

How can I install Ardesia?

See here if exists a binary package for your operating system.

If your operating system is not supported you can try to build Ardesia from source code.

The last source code package is located here. You can also install Ardesia starting from the development source code; more instruction are located here.

If you are yet using a bad and closed source operating system you can build it also; the howto is located in this wiki page.

If you are interested on the status of the MacOsX port let's see here.

How can I save in the iwb format?

Ardesia save automatically in the iwb format at the end of the session. The program will save the artifact under the Ardesia Document folder.

How can I open an iwb file build with Ardesia?

Browse the Ardesia Document folder, select an iwb file and open with Ardesia.

What is "florence-ramble"?

Florence-ramble it is a virtual keyboard that provides a fast way to insert text on the selected window, moving your input device and rambling on keys. Florence-ramble is a fork of florence.

You can use florence-ramble with Ardesia and with an electronic whiteboard also. Florence is free software and it is patent free. You can use florence-ramble on Linux only; if you are using Ardesia and Gnome, the florence-ramble will be shown when you select the text insertion tool. If you have Ubuntu you can open with the Ubuntu Software Center the package for ubuntu x86 or amd64. Florence-ramble is released under the GPL-3 terms, you can download the source code here.

What is "spotlighter"?

The Spotlighter tool focus attention on specific desktop area. It shadows the desktop and shows a movable and resizable spotlight that enlight the point of interest. Spotlighter is included in the ardesia installer for Windows. It is distributed as a standalone package for Ubuntu x86 and amd64 to be opened with the Ubuntu Software Center. Spotlighter is released under the GPL-3 terms, you can download the source code here.

What is "curtain"?

Curtain allows to show and hide desktop areas using a resizable red curtain. Curtain is included in the Ardesia installer for Windows. It is distributed as a standalone package for Ubuntu x86 and amd64 to be opened with the Ubuntu Software Center. Curtain is released under the GPL-3 terms, you can download the source code here.

What is WiildOS?

WiildOS is the first GNU/Linux live and installable distro that support the wiimote whiteboard for educational purposes. Read more here.

Can I use Ardesia, Curtain and Spotlighter on Linux without a composite manager?

No, these tools need a composite manager to handle the transparency.

The point is that the composite manager enable to use full and true transparency; without a composite manager the tool might simulate the transparency by hands. There are no plans to run Ardesia without a composite manager.

For further information about the Compositing window manager you can read the beautiful explanation on this free encyclopedia page.

Now Ardesia has been tested successfully with

- xcompmgr is a simple composite manager made by the freedesktop team (tested with Lxde/openbox, xfce)

- compiz-fusion an OpenGL compositing manager tested on lxde, gnome, kde and xfce

- KWin the default Windows Manager in Kubuntu

- Xfwm the Xfce window and composite manager

- Cairo Composite Manager is a versatile and extensible composite manager which use cairo for rendering. (tested with Lxde/Openbox)

Ardesia is tested unseccessfully with:

- Mutter is the default Gnome 3 window manager; it has a build in composite manager. See issue 34

- Metacity is the default Gnome 2 window manager; it has a build in composite manager. See issue 37

If you want use Ardesia with Gnome we suggest to use compiz as composite manager.

How can I enable a composite manager on Linux?

First of all you must have a driver that allow to use the graphic acceleration. If you are using a Nvidia or an Ati driver card it is sure that you must install the proprietary binary/restricted drivers provided by video card manufacturers. If you are using an Intel driver card it could work out of the box. Please refer to the official documentation of your distro. If you are using Ubuntu you can read the Ubuntu binary driver howto.

After this step you must enable the Compiz or KWin desktop effect putting the "Visual Effects" to normal.

You can do this selecting the preference window clicking on:

menu -> System -> System Settings -> Desktop -> General -> "Enable Desktop effects"

If you use Ubuntu please read this page

If you are using a video card without an accelerated driver, please try to use the Xcompmgr composite manager with the Lxde desktop environment.

If do you want try to use different composite manager please refer to the official documentation of the composite manager that you have chosen.

Ardesia does not start and it says:

"In order to run Ardesia you need to enable a composite manager";

What does it mean?

It means that you must install and run composite manager Please read the "How can I enable a composite manager on Linux?" section

You can try to enable it selecting System/Preference/Appereance and setting the visuals effect to "normal"

Ardesia is not able to record my desktop; Why?

To use the recording feature you must install the Vlc multimedia player and streamer.

If you use Ubuntu you can install it with the command:

If you use an other Linux distro please use your package manager

If you are using Windows you must download the Vlc installer from this site.

and install it.

- if you have other problems try to customize the $PREFIX/share/ardesia/scripts/screencast.sh(or bat for windows)

Ardesia when I am recording is to slow, What can I do?

The on-line recording is very cpu intensive and the it can reduce the speed of your computer. The only thing the you can try to do is customize and optimize the record script lowering the quality this might reduce the cpu usage. To do this modify the file $PREFIX/share/ardesia/scripts/screencast.sh or share\ardesia\scripts\screencast.bat. Please refer to the official vlc documentation to see all the options available.

How can I stream my presentation on the web?

Ardesia supports the live screencast streaming only after that you have configured the setup properly.

In order to make a presentation you must have:

- A running icecast2 server(if you want to be reachable from Internet this machine must have a public IP address and a domain name)

- The local machine that you use to make the presentation The local machine computer must:

- have Ardesia installed

- reach the icecast2 server

- Open the file $PREFIX/share/ardesia/scripts/screencast.sh or share\ardesia\scripts\screencast.bat if you use windows and uncomment the line ICECAST="TRUE";

- Set properly the variables ICECAST_PASSWORD, ICECAST_ADDRESS, ICECAST_PORT, ICECAST_MOUNTPOINT in order to connect to the icecast server

- Open Ardesia

- Push the record button

- Select a name

- Enjoy the stream at the uri http://ICECAST_LOCATION:ICECAST_PORT/ICECAST_MOUNTPOINT.ogg

- Now you can put this link on a web page or publish it in an other way

- For furthermore information about icecast2 server please visit this site

Ardesia bar is not full visible, it is greater than my desktop

Try to put the bar in horizontal position with the gravity option e.g. ardesia -g south

I can not move the Ardesia Bar. Why?

I have put the bar in the right of the screen because is the best position to be accessible with the hand and it does not hide important thinks on the desktop

Anyway you can choose the position starting the Ardesia bar with the decorate option e.g. ardesia -d Now you can move the Ardesia bar everywhere

Here I have not found the replies to my questions. Where can I do it?

You can use the irc chat or send an email to the Ardesia mailing lists. For furthermore information see the support wiki page

I want give a contribute to the project

Well, please read the contribute wiki page.