LaTeX Rules [LWN.net]

LaTeX Rules

Posted Jan 3, 2006 12:41 UTC (Tue) by Zenith (subscriber, #24899)
In reply to: LaTeX Rules by asamardzic
Parent article: Presentations with Pylize (Linux.com)

Having tried both PSTricks and beamer, I give a big thumbs up for beamer as well!
The fact that it's TeX makes it integrate nicely with whatever VCS you are using, and it takes the pain out of making all slides appear alike, unlike OO.org Impress and PowerPoint (if you are working in groups at least, where different members do different parts of the presentation).

The only snag with beamer is, that you really ought to use Xfig to make the figures, and it has a somewhat steep learning curve, but once you get the hang of it, Xfig is actually quite nice.

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LaTeX Rules

Posted Jan 3, 2006 15:12 UTC (Tue) by nicku (subscriber, #777) [Link]

Why I like beamer:

I can get nice handouts and nice presentation slides from the same source
I can move towards my goal of integrating practical workshops in the same file that contains the presentation.
it is as flexible as I want, and it makes me happy to use it.
I am already very familiar with LaTeX.
the auctex package makes it easy to edit in emacs.

I have written a lot of teaching material using Beamer, all available under GPL at nicku.org.

I would say pstricks and pgf have steep learning curves, but xfig?

LaTeX Rules

Posted Jan 3, 2006 23:23 UTC (Tue) by Zenith (subscriber, #24899) [Link]

As another comment points out, the "steep learning curve" mainly relates to the fact that Xfig is so different from anything I have ever tried before, and thus seems quite arcane (B/W, ugly interface - although very effecient once you get to know it).

Also, it has some really strange problems with switching the "units" setting, or the orientation (landscape/portrait), which messes with the grid settings, sometimes making it impossible to do proper aligns afterwards, and also the lines starts snapping to a grid that is some pixels off.
I have also problems understanding the way that it colours the fonts sometimes, if you choose to use LaTeX fonts, and their colour is *not* black (often the case with the beamer theme I use), in the way that sometimes the font is black, sometimes the colour of the fonts that the theme has.

All in all, though, I like Xfig a lot, now that I know its quirks.

LaTeX Rules

Posted Jan 3, 2006 15:31 UTC (Tue) by aaa27 (guest, #13650) [Link]

May I suggest using Dia for your pictures? It's point and click, and can export in eps. You can easily group objects, then align various groups (left right and center)

Switched to Dia 5 years ago from XFig that I never understood, never looked back.

[and agree entirely with the comments suggesting latex-beamer]

André

Dia

Posted Jan 3, 2006 16:58 UTC (Tue) by bastiaan (guest, #5170) [Link]

Well, yes, Dia is very nice for diagrams. Except for that super annoying font size bug: add some text objects, switch to a different zoomlevel and all half of the characters switch to a larger or smaller font size :-( The worst part is that it shows in the Postscript and PNG exports as well.
Does anyone known a good workaround for it?

Thanks,

Bastiaan

LaTeX Rules

Posted Jan 3, 2006 17:23 UTC (Tue) by asamardzic (guest, #27161) [Link]

There are many tools able to create nice EPS figures for including in LaTeX presentations, but what I think is setting Xfig apart is its ability to include LaTeX formulas directly in figure. On the other side, I could imagine Xfig user interface is strange for a regular user of another vector (or raster) drawing package; for casual user, like myself, I guess it's fine.

LaTeX Rules

Posted Jan 3, 2006 18:05 UTC (Tue) by droundy (subscriber, #4559) [Link]

How do you do that? (use latex formulas directly in figure in xfig)

LaTeX Rules

Posted Jan 3, 2006 18:32 UTC (Tue) by asamardzic (guest, #27161) [Link]

See for example here (under "TYPE C - Postscript/Latex format" section).