slides

[Rodrigo Vanegas]

Here's a copy of a recent thread on our local TeX newsgroup.  All the
while i wanted to come out and say that there is an alternative, but
knew all too well that they would demand more specifics than i can
provide.  Can any of you help?  How would you use Lout to make slides?


rodrigo vanegas
address@hidden

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Subject: LaTeX slide style
Organization: Dept. of Computer Science, Brown University
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 1993 04:50:11 GMT

Does anyone have a decent LaTeX slide style?  I would like at least the
following:

- the ability to request a frame around each slide, with a
user-specified footer or header.

- reasonable default sizes.

- at least moderately convenient syntax; ideally no requirements about
multiple files.

The one I have is ok, but it requires a separate master file, which is
annoying, and I can't get the footers as low or as small as I would like
them.

Thanks.
                         Jak

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Subject: Re: LaTeX slide style
Organization: Dept. of Computer Science, Brown University
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 1993 05:25:47 GMT

Try lslide.sty in /cs/data/tex/inputs. It satisfies all your three
requirements -- if I remember right, there are three frame choices and it
needs one file.

However, the sample lslide.tex file doesn't seem to be around anymore. I have
a copy of it in /u/sa/Latex/lslide.tex, if you want to take a look. 

Swarup

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Subject: Re: LaTeX slide style
Organization: Dept. of Computer Science, Brown University
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 1993 17:46:44 GMT

In my humble opinion, all slide in TeX are poor.

Use Framemaker; it's much better and you don't need
production quality in overhead slides.

If you insist on using slides:

   1. Don't use SliTeX! It's outdated and no one
      uses it any more.
   2. lslide is OK
   3. seminar is pretty good. It comes from
      seminar.sty and it works with PSTricks

The main reason for being against TeX and slides
is that slides should have lots of diagrams.
TeX discourages you from having figures because
it's so hard to do 'em. Frame is better.

-Jon

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Subject: Re: LaTeX slide style
Organization: Dept. of Computer Science, Brown University
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 1993 18:38:05 GMT

 Jonathan> In my humble opinion, all slide in TeX are poor.
 Jonathan> Use Framemaker; it's much better and you don't need
 Jonathan> production quality in overhead slides.

I have several reasons for not using Frame:

- With LaTeX I can write slides from home on a terminal.  Obviously I
can't preview them, but I usually want to get the substance in first and
worry about aesthetics last.

- Its mathematics are abominable.

- I don't like its drawing capabilities.  Idraw does what I want, and
importing graphics from idraw into Frame is a pain.  Frame doesn't
display the images I import from idraw any more than xdvi.  Putting
external images in Frame makes it horrendously slow, and they are a
royal pain to move around.

- A lot of what I want to put on slides can be directly taken from
research articles I wrote previously; since I am obviously not about to
use Frame for articles, using LaTeX slides makes it easier to copy
chunks, and less likely to make transcription errors.

- LaTeX is the standard document processing system in academic circles,
at least in CS.  If people want copies of my slides, or if I want to
modify them from somewhere else, they will have LaTeX, but they may not
have Frame.

- It is far easier to get LaTeX help here than Frame help.

- I want to edit the text on my slides with emacs.  How do I do a regexp
replace in Frame?

 Jonathan> If you insist on using slides:

 Jonathan>    1. Don't use SliTeX! It's outdated and no one
 Jonathan>       uses it any more.

Outdated?  What exactly do you mean by that?  That there is something
better?  If so, fine, but just because something is old doesn't mean it
is bad.  No-one uses it any more?  On what do you base this?

 Jonathan>    2. lslide is OK
 Jonathan>    3. seminar is pretty good. It comes from
 Jonathan>       seminar.sty and it works with PSTricks

Thanks.  I will try these out.

 Jonathan> The main reason for being against TeX and slides
 Jonathan> is that slides should have lots of diagrams.
 Jonathan> TeX discourages you from having figures because
 Jonathan> it's so hard to do 'em. Frame is better.

Not many people use TeX for figures.  They use tools like idraw or xfig.
LaTeX imports figures without any difficulty at all.  99% of the time I
don't need to see the content of the figure to get the slide layout
right, and when I do I can just convert the document to Postscript and
view it (though the Postscript viewers we have here are pretty awful).

                         Jak

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Subject: Re: LaTeX slide style
Organization: Dept. of Computer Science, Brown University
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 1993 23:07:17 GMT

Hi!

>  Jonathan>    1. Don't use SliTeX! It's outdated and no one
>  Jonathan>       uses it any more.
>
> Outdated?  What exactly do you mean by that?  That there is something
> better?  If so, fine, but just because something is old doesn't mean it
> is bad.  No-one uses it any more?  On what do you base this?

Gospel from Paul, TeX guru. Not from personal experience. :)

-Jon

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Re: LaTeX slide style
Organization: Dept. of Computer Science, Brown University
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 1993 14:44:30 GMT

   >  Jonathan>    1. Don't use SliTeX! It's outdated and no one
   >  Jonathan>       uses it any more.
   >
   > Outdated?  What exactly do you mean by that?  That there is something
   > better?  If so, fine, but just because something is old doesn't mean it
   > is bad.  No-one uses it any more?  On what do you base this?

   Gospel from Paul, TeX guru. Not from personal experience. :)


Well, an off-hand opinion from Paul, TeX user, anyway.  The
problem with SliTeX is that it allows you only a subset of LaTeX.  It
puts rather cramping restrictions on page size, where to put page
breaks, what you can and can't include on your pages.  (Page 135 of
LaTeX book says you can't use figure and table environments, for
example.  But what if I {\em want} to include figures or tables?  But
see below.)  In addition, the default SliTeX fonts are somewhat ugly
sans serif fonts.  Nothing against sans serif, but these aren't very
pretty.  Besides that, it doesn't handle math very well.  I remember
having trouble with integral signs being the wrong size.

I generally use LaTeX for slides, with a few very simple custom macros
to put titles on every page in the right size, etc.  Actually, for
tables I use TeX's \halign instead of the LaTeX's \begin{tabular}; I
find it gives better control.  (In composing this message now, I
realize that the restriction against the tabular and figure
environments doesn't necessarily mean that you can't include figures
and tables -- the enviromnments are used to put captions and such on
the figures and tables, and to float them.)

I tried Framemaker very briefly, and was disappointed in how hard it
was to place things precisely in figures.  Arrowheads that --
sometimes -- don't quite touch the thing pointed to, and things like
that.  For non-image figures I now use PStricks, which effectively
extends TeX and LaTeX with PostScript-like commands; it gives very
precise control.  It's not for everyone -- definitely not WYSIWYG --
but if you like the control TeX gives you, you may like the similar
control PStricks gives you for figures.  It's available from
ftp.princeton.edu, I believe, along with the seminar.sty LaTeX style
file, another approach to making slides, which I haven't used.  The
author of both packages is Timothy van Zandt, and I believe the files
are in a directory like tvz or pub/tvz.

-- Paul