[OS X TeX] preferred tool for presentations

[Oliver Buerschaper]

>> If you want to move away from tex-based tools, you may try Keynote.
>> You can import latex math very easily by cut-and-paste from a pdf
>> file.
>
> I'm surprised no one has recommended this yet.  Keynote is cheap,
> exceedingly easy to use, and makes terrific presentations.  Using
> TeXShop you can select  an equation from a PDF file and drag it
> directly into your presentation (great for preparing a presentation
> quickly from an existing paper) or use the excellent little app
> LaTeXiT to render LaTeX math code into a little PDF graphic that you
> can likewise drag into your presentation:

Actually I wouldn't recommend this combination at all if you need to  
typeset anything but simple formulas!

True, you can always render the equations externally and then paste  
them into Keynote but this has serious downsides:

1. alignment of these equations among themselves and with the rest of  
the text is a nightmare
2. building up equations (or slides) step by step is next to  
impossible without glyphs dancing about wildly
3. once you pasted an equation it's no longer editable

Eventually I became more and more frustrated with this approach (and  
incidentally Keynote turned me down just a day before a conference  
talk) until someone pointed me to Beamer. I was able to pick up on it  
quite quickly (and save the talk as well as my butt).

These days I'm trying to figure out how to compose decent  
presentations with ConTeXt.  But this is not so much because of any  
shortcomings in Beamer but rather because I've been using ConTeXt for  
other purposes quite a lot recently and I'm stunned by the tricks it  
can pull.

Oliver



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