[OS X TeX] Re: preferred tool for presentations

[Luis Sequeira]

>
> On 2006 Dec 11, at 8:14 PM, David Goldenberg wrote:
>
>> At various times, I have played around with beamer, prosper and
>> powerdot (an update to prosper), but I keep coming back to foiltex
>> for the simplicity of the resulting slides.
>>
>

Let me clarify that powerdot is NOT an update to prosper. It is an  
altogether different documentclass
(in fact, its author, Hendri Adriaens, also had created a package  
called HA-prosper that purported to add some features to prosper; but  
then prosper was no longer maintained, and
Adriaens created powerdot)

> I've only done a few very short "slide shows" and found powerdot was
> just the right thing, esp. given the ability to have it generate
> several slides from one "page" such that each slide had different
> highlighting and the explanatory text at the bottom could change.
> Just my buck fitty. Maybe beamer could do that, but I found the
> learning curve way too steep. Somehow the way I thought about my
> presentation and the way powerdot was written just "fit". Your
> mileage will be different.
>
> --Doug
>
>


Let me add one vote for powerdot here... while beamer can probably do  
everything that powerdot can (and some argue it can do more),
powerdot is extremely easy to use: if you know LaTeX (which of course  
you do), you can start making great presentations in under 5 minutes.

\documentclass{powerdot}
\begin{document}
   \begin{slide}{title}
      stuff \pause more stuff \pause yet more stuff
   \end{slide}
   \begin{slide}{another slide}
     ...
   \end{slide}
\end{document}

For me, a killer feature of powerdot is the handout mode, which, by  
using a simple documentclass option, lets you produce great handouts  
of your material (slides and/or notes),
for your audience.

And while Keynote would definitely win points in mere aesthetics  
(think themes and transitions), for someone who's trying to convey  
material with lots of LaTeX in it,
the all LaTeX workflow of powerdot (or beamer, for that matter) is  
way much smoother - and the end result much more consistent (without  
additional effort) than one would obtain
  with Keynote.

Luis Sequeira



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