Eric listed all (or almost all) "requirements" for exporting Beamer.
Some of the mI encountered a few days ago. I decided to export the lists into latex and then converting by hand the rest of the presentation. I am also very happy that "Beamer" is becoming an official directive of org-mode. Carsten converted us to org-mode and we converted him to Beamer! Daniel 2009/11/23 Eric S Fraga <ucec...@ucl.ac.uk>: > At Mon, 23 Nov 2009 14:55:53 +0100, Carsten Dominik wrote: >> >> Hi Eric, >> >> I am now getting interested in beamer support. I think this is >> interesting enough to implement special support for making beamer >> slides. > > Excellent! > >> Can I ask you to think about it in general terms, what would be useful >> to have? > > I've been using org-mode for my presentations for a few months now and > intensively the past week or so for a set of lectures (70+ slides) I > have to give starting tomorrow (yikes! had better get them > finished...!). It's working remarkably well. > > Beamer has many many features and I think it would violate the ethos > of org-mode if we attempted to support the majority of them. Although > I can suggest a number of features I think would be nice to support, > I'm sure others will have a different subset they think is > critical... however, I will give it a go: > > 1. being able to easily specify columns. I've proposed a solution > works well for me but it is a bit clumsy and does impose a meaning > on the 3rd and 4th level headings. This might conflict with other > potential uses for these headings obviously (cf. next point). Also, > please see my response to your comment on the impact of this on > normal latex export below. The nice thing about using headings to > indicate columns is the ease with which the columns can be > re-ordered. > > 2. it would be nice to support the block environment in beamer. The > obvious way would be to use 3rd level headings to indicate blocks. > In my case, I use these less frequently than columns which is why I > chose to use 3rd level headings to indicate columns. However, a > solution that catered for both would be great. > > one solution I am playing with, given that I often have blocks > within columns, is to use the 5th level headings for block > headings: > > --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8--- > ("\\section{%s}" . "\\section*{%s}") > ("\\begin{frame}\\frametitle{%s}" "\\end{frame}" > "\\begin{frame}\\frametitle{%s}" "\\end{frame}") > ("\\begin{columns} \% %s" "\\end{columns}" > "\\begin{columns} \% %s" "\\end{columns}") > ("\\begin{column}{%s\\textwidth}" "\\end{column}" > "\\begin{column}{%s\\textwidth}" "\\end{column}") > ("\\begin{block}{%s}" "\\end{block}" > "\\begin{block}{%s}" "\\end{block}") > --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8--- > > For example, the following would generate a block within a full > width column on the slide: > > --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8--- > *** Another slide > ***** columns > ******* 1.0 > ********* My proposition > - work better > - work faster > - have a life > --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8--- > > Although clumsy, it works! (set H:5 of course) > > 3. support for animation, typically through the special <N> tags on > items and blocks (and more generally on most latex environments), > would be nice. This can be used to selectively display different > parts of a slide. One way to implement this, at least for itemized > lists, would be through a new bullet point syntax, as in: > > <1-> item to display from first virtual "slide" onwards > <2-3> display on second and third views of the slide > <-4> display up to 4th view > > which would translate to > > \begin{itemize} > \item<1-> item to display from first virtual "slide" onwards > \item<2-3> display on second and third views of the slide > \item<-4> display up to 4th view > \end{itemize} > > I have no idea how hard it would be to incorporate this into the > current list handling however... although I can imagine it could be > quite difficult. > > 4. as already mentioned in another email, passing arguments to the > frame environment would also be quite useful. This could be done > with an attribute type of framework as done for figures and > tables. I don't use many options to frame but I do find the need > to use [shrink=20] or similar often (because my default font > setting for beamer is "bigger" and so slides with more than a few > bullet points or equations quickly overflow the slide). > > 5. finally, I use tikz a great deal in my presentations. However, > this is probably best handled by the normal embedded latex features > already present. > > Again, this list is based on the features I find I use in beamer and > others will have other requirements unfortunately. > >> One of the problems with your most recent solution for the columns >> problem is that the document no longer exports really well to a normal >> LaTeX document - or is this no issue because beamer has its own way to >> produce handouts, so that the LaTeX export of a document intended for >> beamer is not so interesting? > > Yes, beamer provides a very nice handout mode (option "handout" to the > beamer document class). > >> But also in a broader sense: What would be useful? I think making >> slides in this way, through org, could be extremely fast and useful. > > It is indeed fast and very useful. It's made preparing my slides much > less painful and almost a pleasure, especially the ease with which I > can now change the order of my presentation etc! But I should say > that, for pedagogical reasons, I purposely keep my slides quite > simple as much as possible. > > I look forward to seeing what you come up with! I'm happy to send you > examples of both beamer and org-mode->beamer that I have prepared for > seminars and teaching. Let me know. > > > _______________________________________________ > Emacs-orgmode mailing list > Please use `Reply All' to send replies to the list. > Emacs-orgmode@gnu.org > http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacs-orgmode > _______________________________________________ Emacs-orgmode mailing list Please use `Reply All' to send replies to the list. Emacs-orgmode@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacs-orgmode