[OS X TeX] LaTeXiT and transparency

Bruno Voisin bvoisin at mac.com
Fri Jul 7 11:00:02 CEST 2006


Le 7 juil. 06 à 09:30, Victor Ivrii a écrit :

> On 7/7/06, Christof Janssen <c.janssen at mpi-hd.mpg.de> wrote:
>
>> But not all features in Keynote (transitions, shadows) are supported
>> by powerpoint. So, you have to check, whether that what you want to
>> do will actually work in PP
>
> I don't. But some people sometimes need. And it was your question.
> Actually, it was different: can M$PP import Keynote. The answer AFAIK
> is negative.

There are two issues to consider here:

- Exporting from Keynote to PowerPoint Mac: Keynote can do this, but  
you have to be aware that some additional work is necessary: some  
included images, especially those used as background for table cells,  
may appear as big black blobs in PowerPoint; other images will be  
converted to bitmap format during the export, so that you'll lose the  
professional appearance provided by Keynote; list tags (bullets,  
etc.) will change size and vertical positioning when viewed in the  
PowerPoint version. All this needs to be fixed manually from within  
PowerPoint.

- Converting from PowerPoint Mac to PowerPoint Windows: you need to  
make sure that the fonts used in your presentation are available on  
Windows; you need to make sure that the codecs for the animations in  
your presentation are available on Windows (for example that  
QuickTime for Windows is installed). For some reason it seems that in  
some occasions PowerPoint Windows refuses to play the animations  
included in the PowerPoint Mac file, so that the animations will have  
to be included again one by one on the Windows machine. In this  
respect, it seems that whether the animations are included inside the  
PowerPoint file or put alongside it as separate files does matter.

Microsoft has put online instructions on the compatibility between  
the Windows and Mac versions of the Office suite, making them appear  
as really different applications (so that, in effect, you shouldn't  
expect an Office Windows file to be readable flawlessly by Office Mac  
and the other way round). See below a copy of another post that I  
made to this list earlier this year (translated to English).

Feeling at ease with Keynote and not willing to spend time learning  
to use PowerPoint, I tend to prepare all presentations in Keynote  
and, when absolutely necessary, convert them to PowerPoint. However,  
that's never an immediate process (count, say, half a day of work for  
complete conversion from Keynote to PowerPoint). Another conversion  
that I haven't seriously tried yet is from PowerPoint to OpenOffice  
Impress.

Equations, in addition, may represent another significant challenge  
when converting, from PowerPoint Windows to Keynote. In that case,  
I'd say a full day of work for the complete conversion of a 30-slides  
presentation.

Bruno Voisin


> De : Bruno Voisin
> Date : 25 mars 2006 19:43:12 HNEC
> À : TeX on Mac OS X Mailing List
> Objet : Rép : [OS X TeX] White vs. Transparent?
>
> Le 25 mars 06 à 16:34, Victor Ivrii a écrit :
>
>> On 3/25/06, Alan Munn <amunn at msu.edu> wrote:
>>
>>> (And please don't let's turn this into a debate about why I should
>>> use Beamer or Keynote...; my Powerpoint presentations require fast
>>> integration of Excel charts etc. from multiple authors using both  
>>> PCs
>>> and Macs, none of whom use LaTeX.)
>>
>> My condolences. The problem is that (as I suspect) very few people in
>> this list use
>> PP and this makes your chances to get a PP related answer pretty low.
>> My remark about beamer had just a purpose to explain why I cannot  
>> tell
>> much about KN specifics.
>
> Unfortunately I do have to use PowerPoint at times, when  
> contributing to presentations involving several people, most of  
> them on Windows and all of them -- except me -- using PowerPoint --  
> I prefer Keynote.
>
> There are several issues here:
>
> - Compatibility between PowerPoint and Keynote: In my experience  
> Keynote imports fairly well PowerPoint presentations (sometimes you  
> have to cut a PP presentation into several separate ones before  
> importing into Keynote, which otherwise fails with unhelpful error  
> messages), but exporting to PowerPoint isn't as good. Namely, for  
> some reason a number of included graphics appear as black blocks in  
> PowerPoint (I suspect this is precisely the result of PowerPoint  
> not handling transparency), while the others have "gained" a  
> markedly bitmapped look.
>
> - Compatibility between PowerPoint Windows and PowerPoint Mac:  
> These are really two separate applications, and even if the file  
> formats are similar the same presentation delivered under Windows  
> and Mac OS really looks different. For one thing, most of the  
> animations included on a Mac (or exported to PowerPoint Mac from  
> Keynote) won't work on Windows; I suspect this comes from them  
> using a QuickTime container, even if they are indeed in a format --  
> for example AVI -- that Windows can play. Maybe installing  
> QuickTime on the PC solves this. Another issue is fonts: you have  
> to use fonts present on both the Windows PC and the Mac.
>
> Microsoft has published guidelines on compatibility of Office  
> applications between Macs and PCs. Quoting some information [...] I  
> had gathered for my department's fourth-year assessment earlier  
> last year, when we had a number of such compatibility issues:
>
>> - For Office in general
>> <http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/office2004/using.aspx? 
>> pid=usingoffice2004&type=howto&article=/mac/LIBRARY/ 
>> how_to_articles/office2004/of_xplatform.xml>
>>
>> - For Word
>> <http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/word2004/using.aspx? 
>> pid=usingword2004&type=howto&article=/mac/LIBRARY/how_to_articles/ 
>> office2004/wd_compat2004.xml>
>>
>> - For Excel
>> <http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/excel2004/using.aspx? 
>> pid=usingexcel2004&type=howto&article=/mac/LIBRARY/how_to_articles/ 
>> officex/xl_crossplatform.xml>
>>
>> - For PowerPoint
>> <http://www.microsoft.com/mac/products/powerpoint2004/using.aspx? 
>> pid=usingpowerpoint2004&type=howto&article=/mac/LIBRARY/ 
>> tips_tricks/officex/pp_crossplatformtip.xml>
>>
>> In practice for PowerPoint :
>>
>> - For images, convert them to PNG (preferably), JPEG or GIF before  
>> inclusion in the PowerPoint presentation. Drawback: these are  
>> bitmap formats (in physical plane for GIF and PNG, in Fourier  
>> plane for JPEG), hence of lower quality. Remedy: use Keynote,  
>> working in PDF (vector format) natively ;-)
>>
>> - For videos, use AVI rather than QuickTime.
>>
>> - For fonts, limit yourself to the following :
>>
>> 	Arial
>> 	Arial Black
>> 	Century Gothic
>> 	Comic Sans MS
>> 	Copperplate Gothic Bold
>> 	Copperplate Gothic Light
>> 	Curlz MT
>> 	Edwardian Script ITC
>> 	Impact
>> 	Lucida Handwriting
>> 	Monotype Sorts
>> 	Tahoma
>> 	Times New Roman
>> 	Verdana
>> 	Wingdings
>
> Meaning, in essence: use PNG (preferably), JPEG or GIF for images;  
> use AVI rather than QuickTime for animations; and use fonts from  
> the above list.
>
> In my experience, when taking a presentation from PowerPoint Mac to  
> PowerPoint Windows, it is safer to have separate copies of all  
> images and animations, and to re-include them one by one.
>
> That said, regarding your original question about quality of  
> output, I have found that the markedly bitmapped look of images in  
> PowerPoint Mac presentations isn't present in PowerPoint Windows  
> presentations. Maybe Microsoft hasn't put the same amount of  
> efforts in the Mac version as in the Windows one ;-) Or I haven't  
> looked closely enough during the very few times I've used Windows.
>
> In practice, I would recommend making PowerPoint presentations on  
> Windows whenever possible. Sadly! Or use Virtual PC for those with  
> PPC Macs, and for those with MacTels to take a walk on the wild  
> side <http://www.macworld.com/2006/03/firstlooks/xpmini/> ;-)
>
> Bruno Voisin

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