Pau Amaro-Seoane wrote:
Hi,
very often I have to give a talk about my work etc... The slides
contain a lot of math equations, plots and even sometimes some movies.
I was used to latex-beamer to do all this because I want something I
can edit with vi(m) and it fulfilled all requisites ... and I was used
to it when I was using linux.
I have switched to OpenBSD since some 1.5 years and I am very happy to
report here, by the way, that OpenBSD _does_ start X on the projector
where most linux peecees and macs fail :) BUT -and this is the main
reason to write now- the pdf slides created with latex-beamer "feel
heavy"... What I mean is that when using full screen (with xpdf or
kpdf etc) it takes some 3-4 seconds to change a slide. I don't know
why... I can provide you with a test talk, so that you udnerstand what
I mean.
This is very bad when somebody in the public asks a question of plot
number 2 in slide #3 and you're in slide #55. Sure there are ways to
overcome the problem, with the progress bar of latex-beamer, for
instance, but still I don't like it.
I just want to ask here in misc whether somebody has had the same
problem and what other alternatives there are.
I have noticed that a lot of people are using magicpoint out there. I
had a look at it, but it seems not obvious to use when it comes to
latex. As far as i know, there are these two possibilities:
http://www.sonycsl.co.jp/person/nishida/mgp-users/msg00241.html
http://www.sonycsl.co.jp/person/nishida/mgp-users/msg00290.html
I have made some tests and I could not use all latex commands... I run
into a snag in a number of occasions.
Question: Do you have any recommendation / suggestion to prepare talks
to be shown in a projector including mathematical equations, plots
and, eventually, movies (I can live without this last point)?
I am a mathematician so I am quite often in the same position as you to
give presentations which contain
lots of formulas and images.
I use Powerdot class of Latex presentations (descendant of Prosper an
obsolete class of presentations ) which is as an alternative to the
Beamer class. For the comprehensive review of all classes of
presentations for latex you may check
http://texcatalogue.sarovar.org/bytopic.html#present
The advantages over Powerdot over Beamer are numerous.
Powerdot is far easier (has only 60 man pages v.s. Beamer man pages are
over 400 pages).
It is also very simple to incorporate movies into your slides. The
slides are easily customized
and in my point of view far more beautiful than the Beamer.
The popularity of Beamer seems comes from the fact that you can use
pdflatex to produce pdf slides.
That is not possible with Powerdot as it uses some PostScript tricks. So
you will have to latex slides followed by
dvips and ps2pdf or dvipdfm to produce pdf slides. The ultimate goal of
course is to produce pdf slides.
I noticed that one has to use Adobe Reader (I prefer Xpdf as well) which
is only available from ports due to the
license issues in order to have alive links on slides. That seems to be
built in feature ( I would call it bug)
which should be communicated probably up stream. The slides are very
responsive. I personally have not seen better
looking slides on any platform and I think I have seen it all.
Powerdot class of presentations is part of TeXLive but not the part of
teTeX. As you know teTeX is
dead for about three years now and the TeXLive is official TeX
distribution for Unix maintained by TeX community.
TeXLive is available only from ports for OpenBSD 4.2.
However you will have to use port for 4.3 current (soon to be release)
as I stumbled upon a bug in Powerdot
class of presentation. The bug was in TeXLive source code and was well
documented.
It is already fixed by port maintainer for OpenBSD 4.3.
As far as I know TeXLive will be regular package (you will not need to
use ports) starting OpenBSD 4.3. This is
only second Unix like system after Debian to have fully functional
TeXLive thanks to Edd Baret porter of TeXLive
for OpenBSD. On the last note I recommend that you install full TeXLive
which is about 1Gb but includes
all TeX/Latex features coded at the moment. I am not sure if the TeXLive
base includes Powerdot. I would guess yes.
Most Kind Regards,
Predrag Punosevac
Thanks,
Pau
