On Wed, 12 Oct 2005, Daniel Watkins wrote:
I've read quite a lot about using LyX to create presentations, along with such words as Beamer and FoilTeX being thrown around. I was wondering if someone would be kind enough to explain how LyX can be used in such a way, or point me to a website which would do the same?
Dan, Two other responses told you where to learn about the beamer class, but they forgot to answer your question. Most presentations today use a computer and lcd projector to provide the visual aids, which we continue to call "slides." In the Microsoft world speakers seem to be limited to PowerPoint for their slides. In the linux world there are many choices: the three most common are OpenOffice.org's Impress, MagicPoint (mgp123), and LaTeX/LyX. The last one, of course, is far superior to all of the above. :-) LyX allows us to prepare the slides as we would preprae an article, report, or book. Each type of document requires a class that defines the layout of each page (or slide) as well as the entire document. In the LaTeX arena are several classes for slide preparation: seminar, prosper, foiltex, and beamer. Probably more of which I am unaware. For me, beamer is the easiest to learn and use and it produces outstanding visuals with the usualy professional layout design for which we all use LyX/LaTeX. The beamer docs instruct us how to install under LyX as well as under LaTeX. There is a well-documented tutorial and complete instructions. And, of course, there's this mail list as well as a beamer-specific one. I've used beamer to prepare the slides for two public presentations over the past month. I've inserted tables within a slide frame, created graphics using tgif (which are included as .eps files) and PSTricks (compiled with ps4pdf before being inserted into the document), and used the full range of tools to create sections and sub-sections. The output is a .pdf file and is displayed using acroread (or the Windoze equivalent). Because the preparation is done with TeX as the foundation, the output is great and we have control over almost everything except the reaction of the audience. HTH, Rich -- Dr. Richard B. Shepard, President | Author of "Quantifying Environmental Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc. (TM) | Impact Assessments Using Fuzzy Logic" <http://www.appl-ecosys.com> Voice: 503-667-4517 Fax: 503-667-8863
