[Tuglist] Problem with slides.cls

[David Kastrup]

Manoj K N <knm@india.ti.com> writes:

> Hello All,
> 
> While using slides class, I get the following weird error: while I do not
> use the color package, the slide is in portrait mode, irrespective of my
> specifying 
>  
> \documentclass[landscape]{slides}
> 
> If and only if I follow this with 
> 
> \usepackage{color} 
> 
> the document is in landscape mode.
> 
> I fail to understand the problem. I have earlier used this class and had
> it had given correct results then.
> 
> Can someone figure out what is happening?

landscape is a global option interpreted by all packages.  The slides
class just uses it for interchanging text width and height.  It does
not pass any information to the DVI driver because it has no idea
what might be interpreting the DVI.

The color class _has_ to make assumptions about what DVI driver will
be used since it has to insert appropriate color specials.  It will
probably assume dvips, and will most likely be loading some other
package which passes the landscape information on.

Personally, I know that geometry and hyperref will pass this
information through, but there may be quite a few others as well.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum
Email: David.Kastrup@t-online.de