[Tugindia] Unified documenting [was] Regarding usage of css in latex

S. venkataraman svenkat at ignou.ac.in
Tue Jun 29 07:28:49 CEST 2010


On Mon, Jun 28, 2010 at 9:46 PM, Radhakrishnan CV <cvr at river-valley.org>wrote:

> On Mon, Jun 28, 2010 at 11:21 AM, S. venkataraman <svenkat at ignou.ac.in>
> wrote:
> > On Sat, Jun 26, 2010 at 7:22 AM, H.S.Rai <hsrai at gmx.net> wrote:
> >> On Tue, Jun 22, 2010 at 12:53 PM, S. venkataraman <svenkat at ignou.ac.in>
> >> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> If you want to create both presentation and notes from the same
> >>> source, you can use beamer.
> >>
> >> Is it appropriate to call such process "Unified Documenting"?
>
> I think, that sounds a good way of calling it.  Rai, you meant
> creating multiple output with different content from the same source
> or did you mean creating different types of output like html, xml,
> pdf, epub, etc from same source? TeX is ideal for all these.
>
> >> IIRC, pdfscreen can also be used for this purpose. Would like if
> >> someone with more insight of pdfscreen and Beamer, may advise OP
> >> about their relative suitability.
>
> In fact, pdfscreen does this. It defines two environments -- screen
> and print. Whatever text appears within \begin{screen} ...
> \end{screen} will be output only when you invoke 'screen' option while
> loading pdfscreen. In the same fashion, whatever is included within
> \begin{print} ... \end{print} will appear only when you invoke 'print'
> option while loading the package. So these two environments in
> combination with the options of same name can be used to keep
> different content to create different outputs of a presentation and a
> notes document.
>
> [snipped many lines of unwanted text]
>
> > What do you have in mind by unified processing?  I have checked out
> > the pdfscreen documentation thinking I might have missed something
> > in the documentation.  It doesn't allow you to produce notes from
> > the same source. I thought that you may have pdfslides in mind so I
>
> pdfslide is just a slide maker which is hardwired to pdfTeX, it does
> not even have any other backend driver.
>
> > checked it too.  Even this doesn't have this facility.  Pdfscreen
> > and Pdfslides have the advantage that they are easy pick up as
> > opposed to beamer. Pdfscren is good when you want create e-book in
> > PDF format.
>
> That is true. pdfscreen was written during late nineties for the
> University of New Zealand (and they allowed me to release it as free
> software) for delivery of lecture notes to the students over their
> intranet which should facilitate them to read on the screen. At the
> same time, it should allow to print the same content in the usual way
> in an A4/letter paper without any extra formatting or coding of the
> document.  pdfscreen does both the job and it is meant for longish
> documents.  And later, as there was no presentation package available
> at that time, I had added a slide feature to this. And if you cleverly
> use the 'screen' and 'print' options and environments, you can make
> use of pdfscreen in a different way as Rai has intended.
>
> > But, they don't seem to have any facilities for `unified
> > processing' now.
>
> That is not true in my humble opinion. However, newer packages like
> beamer, prosper, etc have a lot more features and are much more
> powerful than pdfscreen. I have not worked on pdfscreen for several
> years now nor do I have any intention to work on it any further as my
> priorities have changed from PDF to XML these days.  People shall make
> use of newer packages for making presentations.
>
> > So, can you clarify the basis of your statement?  Such off the cuff
> > postings are of no help. Before you post kindly check your facts.'
>
> That was slightly abbrassive a comment, Venkataraman, in my opinion.
> Since, I didn't find any response from Rai, I wrote the above.  Hope
> this explains the position.
>
> > Apart from the standard features, beamer also has the commands
> > \mode<article>, \mode<presentation> and this can have text appear
> > only in specific versions.
>
> Here, I have the same opinion as you, Venkataraman. People should
> throw away old packages and adopt newer ones.
>
> Actually, you don't need anything clever to keep content for different
> outputs in the same document.  You only need the good old comment.sty
> which offers wonderful commands like \excludecomment and
> \incudecomment.  See the following document:
>
> %--------> begin <---------
> \documentclass{article}
> \usepackage{lipsum,comment}
>
> \excludecomment{note}
> \includecomment{presentation}
>
> \begin{document}
>
> \begin{note}
>  This is note
>  \lipsum[1]
> \end{note}
>
> \begin{presentation}
>  This is presentation.
>  \lipsum[2]
> \end{presentation}
>
> \end{document}
> %--------> end <---------
>
> If you compile this document, you will get only the presentation
> part.  And if you change the \excludecomment{note} to
> \includecomment{note} and reverse presentation to \excludecomment, you
> will get only note part.  You need to write a small package with two
> options -- 'note' and 'presentation' which should do this job.  By
> loading the package like:
>
>  \usepackage[note]{<package name>}
>
> you can switch to note and by invoking presentation, you can typeset
> presentation part alone.  Hope this might help the OP.
>
> Best regards
>
> --
> Radhakrishnan
> _______________________________________________
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>
Dear CVR,
Thanks for pouring oil over
turbulent waters.
Perhaps I lost my cool at because of
some  fairly innocuos statements.
My apologies to H. S. Rai.
>n fact, pdfscreen does this. It defines two environments -- screen
>and print. Whatever text appears within \begin{screen} ...
>\end{screen} will be output only when you invoke 'screen' option while
l>oading pdfscreen. In the same fashion, whatever is included within
>\begin{print} ... \end{print} will appear only when you invoke 'print'
>option while loading the package.
But, I once again
checked the pdfscreen documentation. It makes no mention
of  screen or print environments.  It only mentions screen and
print options. I checked the style file pdfscreen.sty also.
I could find only two new environments, decl and slide, declared
in the style file.  I have texlive 2009.  Am I missing something somewhere?

I feel frustrated sometimes while using beamer.  It is too
difficult to customise.  I have to spend too much time on
even simple things. I take consolation from the fact that
I am not alone. Better experts than me  have the same experience.
See for example the post by Yannis Haralambous who created Omega.
http://old.nabble.com/Beamer-themes-tutorial-td23612737.html
Victor Shoup has written his own package called projector. He
says in the documentaion:
There are other LaTex classes that do very similar things, such as beamer
and prosper, so why another class? I wrote this class because I found it
easier and more interesting than reading all the documentation and/or
customizing these other classes.projector allows one to make presentations
that can be viewed using any standard PDF viewer. It allows "incremental
builds" of slides, as a sequence of "overlays". While it is easy to
customize the color scheme, layout, etc., the package is designed to produce
rather simple looking slides,
without a lot of gratuitous splashes, streaks, or other decorations, and
without fancy transitions that sparkle or bounce. projector is intended to
be simple and extensible. It provides basic functionality, and does not
impose any preconceived notions about what your slides should look like.
I am not knocking any of the existing packages, but I often go through
websites of people who are reputed to be good teachers.  I find them
using very plain slides without much fancy stuff.  So, simple packages
like pdfslides have a place in the scheme of things.   For example, Kosslyn,
in his book `Clear and to the point: 8 psychological principles for
compelling PowerPoint' says that unnecesary effects actually distract the
attraction of audience. Of course, it is not the fault of the package if
people misuse it.
Best regards,
S. Venkataraman


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