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Beamer LaTeX Document Class

website·Indexed 31 days ago

https://www.beamer.plus/home.html

A LaTeX class for creating presentations for projectors and other media. The documentation covers installation, building presentations with frames and overlays, managing global and local structures, and customizing appearance through themes, colors, and fonts. It also includes guides on creating supporting materials like handouts, lecture notes, and transparencies, as well as emulation layers for importing presentations from other packages such as Prosper, Powerdot, and Seminar.

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What's inside Beamer

  1. Overview of Beamer appearance customization levels

    Beamer provides three levels of granularity for controlling the appearance of a presentation:

    1. Themes: Used for global, high-level changes to the overall look and feel.
    2. Templates: Used for fine-grained control, allowing the specification of appearance for every minute detail individually.
    3. Color and Font Themes: Specialized global controls for colors and typography, which can still be overridden for specific elements (e.g., changing the color of block titles independently).

  2. Overview of the beamer LaTeX class

    beamer is a LaTeX class used for creating presentation slides (called 'frames') typically for projection or transparency. Unlike WYSIWYG programs, beamer presentations are structured as LaTeX documents with a preamble and body, utilizing standard LaTeX elements like \sections, \subsections, and itemize/enumerate environments.

  3. Overview of the LaTeX Project Public License (LPPL)

    The LaTeX Project Public License (LPPL) is the primary license used for the LaTeX kernel and base LaTeX packages. It is designed for TeX-related works (like LaTeX packages) but can be used for any work where the author holds the copyright. It provides conditions for the distribution and modification of works while aiming to maintain the availability, integrity, and reliability of the original work.

  4. Use Beamer themes with section and subsection tables

    The Copenhagen family of themes (Copenhagen, Luebeck, Malmoe, Warsaw) provides compressed information about the current section and subsection at the top, and the title/author at the bottom. They generally have a 'flat' look without shadows.
    \usetheme{Copenhagen}

  5. Understand Beamer's color management system

    Beamer uses 'beamer-colors' rather than standard LaTeX colors. A beamer-color is a structured object consisting of a foreground (fg) and a background (bg).

    Key characteristics:

    • Optionality: Either the foreground or background can be 'empty', meaning the previously active color remains in use.
    • Inheritance: Beamer-colors can inherit from others. For example, many elements inherit from the structure color. Changing a parent color automatically updates all derived colors.
    • Dynamic Updates: Inheritance is dynamic; if a parent color changes during a presentation, derived colors update automatically.

  6. Understand Beamer theme types

    Beamer uses five distinct types of themes to control the appearance of a presentation:

    • Presentation Themes: High-level themes that bundle a color, font, inner, and outer theme together to create a cohesive look.
    • Color Themes: Control only the colors used in the presentation (e.g., button borders, backgrounds, and text).
    • Font Themes: Control the fonts and font attributes used across the presentation.
    • Inner Themes: Control the typesetting of elements inside the frame, such as enumerations, itemize environments, block environments, theorem environments, and the table of contents.
    • Outer Themes: Control the 'border' of the slides, including head- and footlines, sidebars, logo placement, navigation symbols, and the position/style of the frametitle.

  7. Select a Beamer solution template by talk length and style

    Depending on the requirements of your presentation, you can use the following templates found in beamer/doc/solutions:

    • Speaker Introduction (Short Talk): Use short-talks/speaker_introduction-ornate-2min for an ornate style introduction of another speaker (approx. 2 minutes).
    • Generic Presentation: Use generic-talks/generic-ornate-15min-45min for a general subject talk with an ornate style (15 to 45 minutes).
    • Conference Presentation: Use conference-talks/conference-ornate-20min for a conference or colloquium talk with an ornate style (approx. 20 minutes).

  8. Implement interactive navigation and non-linear flow in Beamer

    To handle audience questions or varying levels of detail, use these interactive strategies:

    • Skip Buttons: Create buttons that jump over specific sections to provide visual feedback to the audience about what is being skipped.
    • Appendix: Place supplementary frames in a separate appendix section, accessed via hyperjumps, to keep the main flow clean.
    • Goto/Return Buttons: Create detours to detailed slides with a corresponding return button to jump back to the original position.
    • Frame Zooming: Use \framezoom to link to specific zoomed-out parts of a complex slide.
    • Frame Repetition: Use \againframe to repeat or continue frames that were previously suppressed or started elsewhere.
    \againframe{frame_label}
\framezoom{...}

  9. Configure Beamer for dual-screen presentations

    Beamer supports dual-screen output by creating 'superwide' PDF pages (default width 192mm, height 128mm). The left half of the page is mapped to the first video output (main presentation) and the right half to the second video output (auxiliary material). This functionality relies on the pgfpages package. Note that compatibility depends on the PDF viewer; for example, PDF Presenter supports this, while some versions of Acrobat Reader may not.

  10. Create and control lists with itemize, enumerate, and description

    Beamer provides three primary environments for lists: itemize (unordered), enumerate (ordered), and description. These can be nested up to three levels deep. The \item command is overlay-aware, meaning you can specify which slide an item appears on using <slide_number>. If an item has both an optional label and an overlay specification, the overlay can be placed before or after the label (e.g., \item<1>[Cat] or \item[Cat]<1>).
    \begin{frame}
 There are three important points:
 \begin{enumerate}
 \item<1-> A first one,
 \item<2-> a second one with a bunch of subpoints,
   \begin{itemize}
   \item first subpoint. (Only shown from second slide on!).
   \item<3-> second subpoint added on third slide.
   \item<4-> third subpoint added on fourth slide.
   \end{itemize}
 \item<5-> and a third one.
 \end{enumerate}
\end{frame}

  11. Use overlay specifications with environments

    Most predefined Beamer environments (like theorem, proof, and example) accept an overlay specification. Adding one causes the entire environment to be uncovered only on the specified slides. Additionally, environment versions of basic overlay commands exist: onlyenv, altenv, visibleenv, uncoverenv, and invisibleenv.
    \begin{theorem}<1->
    There exists an infinite set.
\end{theorem}

\begin{onlyenv}<2>
    This line is inserted on slide 2.
\end{onlyenv}

\begin{altenv}<2>{(}{)}{[}{]}
    word % Round brackets on slide 2, square on others
\end{altenv}

  12. Organize frame content with blocks and columns

    To create visual structure within a frame:

    • Blocks: Use the block environment to group content under a title.
    • Columns: Use the columns environment to split the frame horizontally. Use \column{width} to define each column (e.g., .5\textwidth).
    • Alignment: Add the [t] option to the columns environment to ensure columns are top-aligned regardless of their content height.
    \begin{frame}
  \frametitle{Comparison}
  \begin{columns}[t]
    \column{.5\textwidth}
      \begin{block}{Left Side}
        Content A
      \end{block}
    \column{.5\textwidth}
      \begin{block}{Right Side}
        Content B
      \end{block}
  \end{columns}
\end{frame}