[OS X TeX] Shadows of pdf in Keynote

[Peter Vamos]

At 10:00 -0500 3/4/08, Chris Goedde wrote:

>On Apr 3, 2008, at 7:05 AM, Peter Vamos wrote:
>
>>I write my presentations in TS and then  cut and paste into 
>>Keynote. Occasianally, I like to apply shadows to this pdf in 
>>Keynote so that
>>
>>*only the text (and math) characters cast a shadow*.
>>
>This used to work but some time ago the behaviour changed: when I 
>apply the shadow in Keynote now, the _whole_ pdf will cast a shadow 
>as if it were not transparent, it now behaves as just one graphic.



>This works for me using the same versions of TS and OS X, but with 
>Keynote 3.0.2, so I suspect it's something with Keynote or with some 
>other setting.

Strange. I've just tried with Keynote 3.0.2 and it _did not work_ for 
me i.e. I still get the whole pdf to cast a shadow. In TS Preferences 
-> Copy I have the default Foreground Prominence 0 (normal). So what 
is different in our set-ups?

>  Do you have Equation Service 
>(http://www.esm.psu.edu/mac-tex/EquationService/)? That has a 
>preference to make the background of the pdf produced by TeX 
>transparent or opaque; that's something you could play around with 
>to see if it makes a difference.

Could not get Equation Service to work (yes I did fix the path) 
although I did not try long. Have not tried LaTerXiT either since 
neither of these really suit the way I work. I do write essentially 
the whole presentation in LaTeX with Beamer, I need the numbering of 
results etc.. In fact my presentation comes from my article/class 
notes.

I use Keynote only for its large headers, the rest is the pasted pdf. 
I do use just Beamer/Acrobat  as well and in fact carry this pdf 
version just in case I cannot use my laptop.

So why Keynote? To be honest I am myself ambivalent about fancy 
presentations especially in my subject (pure mathematics). On the one 
hand I sat through lots of presentations in various other subjects 
(computer science, physics, other mathematics,..) and often got the 
impression that content was inversely proportional to the fanciness 
of the presentation. Pursuing this argument,  toyed with the idea of 
giving my talks in a sandbox a la Archimedes as the other extreme. 
Pure mathematics doesn't lend itself to pie-charts, movie clips or 
equations `twirling' into view...

On the other hand I am somewhat susceptible to eye-candy and like to 
be different, it is a bit boring to see everyone using Beamer, often 
with the same theme, complete with the navigation icons at the bottom 
which they never use... With Keynote, if your results won't impress 
them maybe the 3D cube transitions will. I had people coming up to me 
after my presentations and asking me how I did this in Power Point?! 
A bit of a let down expecting a mathematical question! I tell them 
that I use Keynote but they'll also need a Mac to run it.

Anyway, back to shadows, not really essential in my line, in fact 
probably better off without it. Still very intrigued why it stopped 
working. If anyone here in this list still reading this... At least 
if I could pin it down to either the pdf export of TS or the pdf 
import of Keynote, it would help.

Peter