T. W. Shield

Computer Presentations Using LaTeX

Or how to avoid using PowerPoint™

To give presentations using a computer I use the Seminar style under LaTeX and then use Ghostscript to generate an image for each page that fits my portable's screen. I have written a simple Qt based program to display these images under either Windows or Unix. With the Windows packages listed below I have been able to generate my slideshow starting from the LaTeX file under Windows.

Note that the script below is setup for 1024x768 images, you will have to tweak some of the settings in the pstoimgs.pl script to use a different size screen.

See why PowerPoint™ (and any slideshow) is bad for teaching http://www.ntlf.com/html/sf/cyberspace.htm

Other altenatives to PowerPoint™ are here and this page presents some TeX based alternatives.

Advantages

• If you write your papers/reports in LaTeX then making a presentation is a cut and paste operation.
• Equations are their usual LaTeX quality.
• No waiting for complex graphics to render. Each slide takes the same (short) time to display.
• You can give your presentation using an non-Windows OS.
• You don't have to use PowerPoint™
• and you automatically avoid all the PowerPoint Pitfalls

What You Need

For Windows you can also check out the Cygwin which gives you lots of Unix tools under Windows, including LaTeX, Ghostscript and an X-Server. I need to check this out.

Note that if you generate your slideshow images on another machine (linux, etc.) you only need these images and slideshow.exe on your Windows portable to give your presentation.

Seminar Example

An example tex file showing how to use the seminar package is here along with all the output from running the commands below.

How To Use It:

Assuming you have seminar-example.tex in you current directory, run the following commands:

latex seminar-example.tex
xdvi -paper usr seminar-example.dvi
dvips -t landscape seminar-example.dvi
pstoimgs.pl seminar-example.ps

This example uses the slides in landscape mode, thus the -paper usr (US rotated) option to xdvi and -t landscape to dvips.

Finally run slideshow.exe in the directory in while the seminar-example-###.png files were created by pstoimgs.pl.

QtSlideShow

This is the program I wrote to display the PNG images created by my pstoimgs.pl script.

Using qtslideshow

Starting qtslideshow in a directory with no command line parameters will cause qtslideshow to load all the PNG files in the current directory. Or you can give it a list of PNG files to load on the command line.

Mouse Clicks

• Left: Next Slide
• Right: Previous Slide
• Any Click in non-full screen window: Makes window full screen (for returning from iconified--H key)

Key Strokes

• Space/N/Down/PageDown: Next Slide
• Up/PageUp: Previous Slide
• H: Hide (iconify) the Slideshow Window
• 1: First Slide
• 0: Last Slide
• Q: Prompt to Quit

If your images are smaller than your screen, QtSlideShow will center the image on the screen.

Source

QtSlideShow is written for Qt 3.x from TrollTech.

qtslideshow-0.0.1.tar.gz (approx 1MB, includes Windows executable, which is available separately above)

What about Movies, etc...

To play a movie, I hide the SlideShow widow (H key) and have the Windows MediaPlayer (or what ever you want to use to play the movie, etc.) running in the background. When the movie is done, pick the SlideShow from the task bar and click in its window to make it full screen again.

To remind myself that I should play the movie, I put the following image on a blank slide:

Last modified 12/17/02