[texhax] More Beamer questions

[Tom Backer Johnsen]

Steve Schwartz wrote:
> Hi Tom,
> 
> On Mon, 2007-01-22 at 15:04 +0100, Tom Backer Johnsen wrote:
>> I am beginning to get the hang of Beamer for a course that starts in a 
>> three weeks time, but there are (of course) a huge number of thisng to 
>> learn.  Here are a few:
> 
> Yes, steep learning curve. I'm not an expert expert, but...
> 
>> There are a few elements in most or all of the themes for Beamer which 
>> I would like to eliminate from the slides.  First, if you have defined 
>> an author and a title for the presentation, these elements always 
>> appear at the top of the sidebars.  I would prefer to have this 
>> information on the first frame, using \maketitle.  That would save 
>> valuable real estate.  Is it possible to use some option like 
>> "\noauthor" somewhere?
> 
> This depends on the theme you use. You can cheat many of them by setting
> the "short" form of author, etc., to be blank. The short form is
> specified as an optional argument in square brackets, e.g.:
> 
> \author[sjs]{Steve Schwartz}
> 
> will use "sjs" in place of my full name wherever the them uses
> \insertshortauthor or somesuch. I think if the optional argument is
> totally absent, this command will use the full one instead. So
> 
> \author[]{Steve Schwartz}
> 
> will omit my name except on the title page (which doesn't call the short
> form). The same applies to \institute, \date, etc. This doesn't always
> work completely, as some themes typeset some things, such as the
> institute, inside parentheses. So using the above trick reduces the
> sidebar entry to "()" which is better than "Steve Schwartz (very long
> institute sidebar...)" Here I think you'll need to hack the theme to do
> what you want. When you typeset, look at the latex log and find the
> "beameroutertheme" or somesuch. That will tell you where to look. Hack
> that file as necessary and save it somewhere latex can find it with a
> new name. Then you'll need to find and hack the top-level theme that
> calls this to call your own outertheme instead. You might be able to do
> all this in a single file, or even a preamble, depending on what you
> want to change, e.g., by doing it yourself via:
> 
> \setbeamertemplate{sidebar left}{
> ...
> }
> 
> putting inside here what you want in the sidebar (cutting and pasting
> from the theme you like/use and modifying accordingly).
> 
>> The other thing which I would like to eliminate is the faint 
>> navigation things close to the lower right corner.  Is it possible to 
>> supress this part of the slide?
> 
> This is easier:
> 
> \setbeamertemplate{navigation symbols}{}

Very useful pointers and help.  Thank you!

Tom

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| Tom Backer Johnsen, Psychometrics Unit,  Faculty of Psychology |
| University of Bergen, Christies gt. 12, N-5015 Bergen,  NORWAY |
| Tel : +47-5558-9185                        Fax : +47-5558-9879 |
| Email : backer at psych.uib.no    URL : http://www.galton.uib.no/ |
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