Re: [seul-edu] Presentation Software

[Jan Hlavacek <jhlavacek@sf.edu>]

On Wed, Mar 07, 2001 at 12:33:42PM -0500, Keith O'Hara wrote:
> Has anyone had any luck with any open source presentation software.  I know
> LaTeX can be used, but can anyone point me in the right direction.

LaTeX can indeed be used to produce great presentations, if you don't
mind LaTeX, you can create fantastic looking presentations.  There is
whole bunch of packages and document classes that you can use,  starting
with the standard slides document class, seminar document class, and IBM's
FoilTeX (non free).  All these were meant to be used for creating
transparencies, but you can use them for screen presentation, too.

Basically to create a screen presentation with LaTeX,  you create set of
slides in landscape mode using LaTeX with appropriate class/package,
but process it with pdflatex instead of latex, so the result is a pdf
document.  You can then use Acrobat Reader or any other software that
displays pdf.  Acrobat reader and ghostscript both run on several
platforms,  so your presentation is fairly platform independent.
Acrobat reader can run in fullscreen mode (at least on Linux and
Windows, I didn't try any other platform).  

Pdflatex should come with every decent TeX distribution.  It you don't
have it, you can find it on any CTAN archive (http://www.ctan.org/).

There are some small differences between typical latex+dvips combination
and pdflatex, namely in color definitions and including graphics.
If you define colors using the "named" color model, pdflatex does not
recognizes the same set of color names as dvips does.  You cannot
directly insert postscript picture, but you can insert pdf picture, jpeg
and png.  So if you have a postscript picture you want to include, you
have to convert it into pdf first (ps2pdf(1)). 

Here is a brief list of packages and tools that can help you with LaTeX
presentations:

hyperref.sty - the hyperref package gives you control over lot of
	       aspects of pdf files - links between pages, transition
	       effects, colors, you can make acrobat reader start in
	       full page mode, etc.  Should be standard in any TeX
	       distribution, if you have very old one, go grab the new
	       version from your favorite CTAN mirror - there have been
	       some nice improvements in last couple years.

pdfscreen.sty  -  a package build on top of hyperref, lets you create cool
		  navigation panels in your presentation, and gives you
		  come other cool effects.
		  http://www.river-valley.com/download/ and look at
		  their online manual.

PPower4	- a "pdf postprocessor" written in java.  It makes it possible
	    (and indeed easy) to build you pages incrementally.  It
	    comes with "pause.sty" package which defines \pause LaTeX
	    command.  You include \pause commands in your LaTeX source,
	    use pdflatex to create pdf file, run the pdf file through
	    ppower4, and the resulting pdf file has all the
	    incrementally build pages you want.  It does some pretty
	    neat things, too, you can make text appear at some point and 
	    disappear later, and with a little bit of LaTeX wizardry, you
	    can even make a piece of text appear, then disappear, and later
	    another text appear at the same place.  Get it at 
	    http://www-sp.iti.informatik.tu-darmstadt.de/software/ppower4/
	    It needs java.

TeXPower -  Does pretty much the same as PPower4, but using a LaTeX
	    package instead of a postprocessor.  Just
	    \usepackage{texpower} in your document and you are in.
	    Advantage: you don't have to postprocess.  Disadvantage:  it
	    is currently in pre-alpha stage.  It seems to work very well
	    for most cases, though.  I found it little bit less flexible
	    than the newest beta of ppower4, there were couple of things
	    I could do with ppower4 which didn't work with texpower, but
	    they were pretty nasty.  TeXPower also seems to be evolving
	    pretty rapidly.
	    http://ls1-www.cs.uni-dortmund.de/~lehmke/TeXPower/

mpmulti.sty - a package that lets you include multi-level metapost file
	       directly into your document.  It inserts the \pause
	       command between the levels, so you can build an image
	       incrementally.  Find it at the same place as the beta of 
	       Ppower4. 

LyX - document processor (http://www.lyx.org/) - basically very
      sophisticated "frontend" for LaTeX.  It has support for slides and
      foils document classes.  If you have LyX installed, choose Help
      and Extended Features from the menu, and then Navigate/Special
      document classes/Slides or Foils for instructions how to use them. 
      Since LyX lets you insert LaTeX commands, you could even use
      \pause command ant other fancy stuff, and use ppower4 or TeXPower
      with LyX to create dynamic presentations.  I never tried it, but
      I can't see any reason why it shouldn't work.

Good luck!

-- 
Jan Hlavacek                                            (219) 434-7566
Department of Mathematics                             Jhlavacek@sf.edu
University of Saint Francis               http://www.sf.edu/jhlavacek/