I posted some of this to lyx-users, but Christian Ridderström suggest I
post to dev. Apologies for reposting-
LyX does well editing traditional article / book type documents, but I
think it could be improved for presentations using beamer or powerdot.
Maybe these things can be done currently from LyX, but I often overlook
features :-)
1. Single frame view option. Now LyX continuously puts the text in
slide after slide. When I hit PgDn I want to see the next slide with
the title at the top and just the stuff for that slide, not the next
section of text that may or may not have a title at the top. Or at
least let PgDn move the next frame to the top with other stuff below as
needed.
2. Slide sorter view. You often need to easily cut and paste sections
of a talk or move slides around. Seeing all your slides rendered at 33%
or 50% size where you can drag them around would be great. Currently,
you have to be very careful to cut and past w whole slide due to the way
LyX handles sections (losing frame type, changing text to some other
type, etc)
Jürgen Spitzmüller pointed out the outline editor. This allows you to
move slides, but not copy or delete slides. I thought about hacking
something to render the pdf, display the tiles, chop up the lyx frames,
allow you to copy and move slides, then piece frames back together...
Terrible kludge. Moving stuff should suffice.
3. Slide animation editor. Beamer and powerdot require a goodly amount
of ERT or hacks to get animations. There has to be a better way than
ERT for this. Maybe just a special section type like "Itemize
(Animate)" instead of inserting \pauses everywhere?
4. Support for animate.sty (movies). I turned to beamer/powerdot since
I could not get nice matlab animations into powerpoint. The
animation.sty allows you to string together eps files into a nice movie
(I use sequentially numbered image files generated from Matlab or
tgif). I have pestered the animate author to get some issues worked out
with cygwin+lyx+animate, but it ends up being some ERT. Bearable to me,
but others may want a cleaner interface with some preview.
5. Additional graphics overlay. Maybe you want to add a circle around
something important. Or have text appear and an arrow to highlight
something. You can do this with lots of ERT, but presentations for most
people are not a coding exercise. LaTeXDraw may be a decent option, a
GPL graphical pstricks editor. Render the slide, the use it as a
background for LaTeXDraw maybe?
I have used LyX for many years (over a decade!) and finally I think am
starting to move to using it for presentations. I have templates for
both beamer and powerdot working. I can deal with limitations, but some
of these things would make it a better package. All I need is vector
graphics, decent equations, simple animations and a decent editor. LyX
gives me this, but some UI things could help others...
Thanks again to all for your contributions!
Ed
PS- I made modifications to the wiki for tgif+lyx+vista for using LyX
for editing WYSIWYG equations from tgif. Thanks for the password!
PPS- I found that tgif also works well for quick and easy vector
animation editing using "stacked pages" and "print one file per page"
with ERT in LyX:
\animategraphics[step]{fps}{filenamewithoutnum}{startnum}{endnum}
But you have to mouse click to step forward the animation in acroread,
not just pgdn or space.
--
Ed Gatzke, Associate Professor
Department of Chemical Engineering, University of South Carolina
Swearingen Engineering Center, Office 3C19, Columbia, SC 29208
NOTE: On sabbatical in Germany until July, 2009
