Re: [Orgmode] latex export and beamer columns

[Daniel Martins]

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 <address@hidden>:
> 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.
>
>
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