Powerpoint-Style Presentations using LaTeX

General Questions:
How do I include postscript figures in a TeX file?
How do I figure out the bounding box (BoundingBox) for an encapsulated postscript file?
Can I include a JPEG (jpg) graphic file directly into TeX or LaTeX?
Is there a way to automatically figure out and insert the bounding box in a postscript file?
How can I convert a TeX or LaTeX file to a text (ascii) file?
Where do I get RevTeX?
How do I reduce the size of postscript figure files?
How do I find out the LaTeX page layout parameters?

The best solution at present is to take advantage of Adobe's Acroread PDF viewer, which is available at no charge for all of the major platforms (although not all platforms have the most up-to-date version available). The basic idea is to convert your LaTeX presentation to a PDF file and then to display it using Acroread. The features are:

 * full-screen mode (so all you see is your talk projected on the screen)
 * transition effects including
    * bullet items revealed one-by-one
    * figures revealed step-by-step
    * fancy page (or partial page) transitions, such as left-to-right wipes
 * hyperlinks in your document so you can click them to go to other parts of 
    your talk or to external web pages

To incorporate transition effects, there are at least three choices at present: the TeXPower bundle by Stephan Lemke, the PPower4 postprocessor, and the Prosper package. Descriptions and links are given in the resource pages listed below.

Some resource pages for such presentations are:

PDF Classroom Demonstrations: http://www.math.uakron.edu/~dpstory/pdf_present.html

Screen presentations: http://www.miwie.org/presentations/ (This site is kept up to date.)

Prosper (LaTeX class for writing transparencies): http://prosper.sourceforge.net/

2002-Jun-17 9:05am furnstahl.1@osu.edu

TeXPower package

Using Acrobat or Acroread for Presentations

Answers in this category:
How do I create a presentation with PDFLatex?
How do I start another program from within a PDF presentation?
How do I automatically start a PDF presentation in full-screen mode?

You still need to use a package (or the slides class) to format your slides. Possibilities are foiltex, seminar, the LaTeX2e slides class, prosper, pdfslide, pdfscreen, ...

The features of texpower are implemented entirely using TeX and LaTeX, but the final output file must be a pdf file. There are several options, including:
* pdfLaTeX to directly create pdf files from LaTeX
* LaTeX + dvips + pstopdf
* LaTeX + dvips + Acrobat Distiller

I favor the pdfLaTeX approach, but your mileage may vary.

2002-Oct-22 7:53am furnstahl.1@osu.edu

Demonstrations and Examples

Answers in this category:
Where do I get TeXPower?
Is there a manual for TeXPower?

Here are some of the demonstration pdf files included in the TeXPower bundle:

* fulldemo.pdf (http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~ntg/pdf/texpower/fulldemo.pdf), which demonstrates most of TeXPower's capabilities.

* FAQ-display.pdf (http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~ntg/pdf/texpower/FAQ-display.pdf), which is the display version of the TeXPower FAQ.

2002-Oct-22 7:58am furnstahl.1@osu.edu

Answers in this category:

There is also an FAQ, available in display form: </~ntg/pdf/texpower/FAQ-display.pdf> or printable form: </~ntg/pdf/texpower/FAQ-printout.pdf>.

2002-Mar-31 9:48am furnstahl.1@osu.edu

Answers in this category:
Where do I get an up-to-date version of the Acrobat PDF Reader (Acroread)?
How do I enter/exit the Acrobat Reader (Acroread) full-screen mode?
What "Full Screen Preferences" are useful for Acrobat Reader?

 * under the View menu, select "Full Screen"
 * or use the short-cut, which is usually Ctrl+L (it is listed next to 
    "Full Screen" under the View menu) or Command+L (on Macs)

 * use the "escape button" (usually marked "Esc" in upper left of keyboard)
 * use the short-cut, which is usually Ctrl+L (it is listed next to 
    "Full Screen" under the View menu) or Command+L (on Macs)

 * Advance On Any Click if you have a remote control (e.g., RF) mouse
 * Loop After Last Page takes you back to the beginning
 * Escape Key Exits --- Esc leaves full-screen mode

-------------- begin excerpt -------------

Herman Bruyninckx submitted the following macros to start up movies or other programs from within a PDF presentation made with LaTeX:

The key is to write a little shell-script and launch it from within pdflatex. In the shell-script you should simply call a standard unix tool for viewing video files, e.g.:

 mpeg_play -controls off -dither color -position +128+96 video.mpg

 \newcommand{\pdflaunch}[1] {\pdfpageattr{/AA << /O << /S /Launch /F (#1) >>>>}}
 \newcommand{\pdflaunchlink}[2]{%
      \pdfannotlink attr{/Border [0 0 0]} user{/Subtype /Link /A << %
        /S /Launch /F (#1) >>}%
      \pdfliteral{0 1 0 0 k}%  
      {#2}\pdfliteral{0 0 0 1 k}\pdfendlink%
      }

 \pdflaunch{videoscript.sh}
     

 \pdflaunchlink{videoscript.sh}{Start video}

 killall mpeg_play
     

------------------ end excerpt ------------------

2002-Jun-17 8:59am furnstahl.1@osu.edu

  \usepackage[plainpages=false]{hyperref}

  \hypersetup{pdfpagemode=FullScreen}

   ------------ begin excerpt -------------

By convention, the first line of a PostScript file specifies the type of PostScript and is then followed by a series of comments called the header or preamble. (Like LATEX, PostScript's comment character is %). One of these comments specifies the BoundingBox. The BoundingBox line contains four integers:

1. The x-coordinate of the lower-left corner of the BoundingBox.
2. The y-coordinate of the lower-left corner of the BoundingBox.
3. The x-coordinate of the upper-right corner of the BoundingBox.
4. The y-coordinate of the upper-right corner of the BoundingBox.

For example, the first 5 lines of an eps file created by gnuplot are

  %!PS-Adobe-2.0 EPSF-2.0
  %%Creator: gnuplot
  %%DocumentFonts: Times-Roman
  %%BoundingBox: 50 50 410 302
  %%EndComments

Thus the gnuplot eps graphic has a lower-left corner with coordinates (50, 50) and an upper-right corner with coordinates (410, 302). The BoundingBox parameters have units of PostScript points which are 1/72 of an inch, making the above graphic's natural width 5 inches and its natural height 3.5 inches. Note that a PostScript point is slightly larger than a TEX point, which is 1/72.27 of an inch. In TEX and LATEX, PostScript points are called "big points" and abbreviated bp while TEX points are called "points" and abbreviated pt.

3.3 Converting PS files to EPS

Single-page PostScript files without any improper commands can be converted to eps by using one of the following methods for adding a BoundingBox line. Since these methods do not check for illegal PostScript operators, they do not produce usable EPS files unless the PS files are free of forbidden operators.

1. The most convenient option is to use the ps2epsi utility distributed with Ghostscript (see Section 5), which reads the PostScript file, calculates the BoundingBox parameters, and creates an eps file (complete with a BoundingBox) which contains the PostScript graphics. The resulting file eps file is in epsi format, which means it contains a low- resolution bitmapped preview at the beginning of the file. Since this preview is ascii-encoded, it does not cause the Section 4.1 bufsize errors. However, this epsi preview increases the file size.

2. Alternatively, the BoundingBox parameters can be calculated and inserted in the PostScript file's BoundingBox line or specified in the graphics-insertion command (e.g., the \includegraphics command's bb option). There are several ways to calculate the BoundingBox parameters

(a) Use Ghostview/GSview to display the PostScript graphic. As the pointer is moved around the graphic, the pointer's coordinates (with respect to the lower-left corner of the page) are displayed. To determine the BoundingBox parameters, record the pointer coordinates at the lower-left corner of the graphic and the upper-right corner of the graphic.

(b) Print out a copy of the PostScript graphics and measure the horizontal and vertical distances (in inches) from the lower-left corner of the paper to the lower-left corner of the graphics. Multiply these measurements by 72 to get the BoundingBox's lower-left coordinates. Likewise, measure the distances from the lower-left corner of the paper to the upper-right corner of the graphics to get the BoundingBox's upper-right coordinates.

(c) The bbfig script uses a PostScript printer to calculate the BoundingBox. bbfig adds some PostScript commands to the beginning of the PostScript file and sends it to the printer. At the printer, the added PostScript commands calculate the BoundingBox of the original PostScript file, printing the BoundingBox coordinates superimposed on the PostScript graphic.

   ---------------- end excerpt -----------------

   gs -sDEVICE=bbox -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH file.ps

I have written a perl script that will automatically find the bounding box and correct the postscript file (or add the info if there is none). The script is

    </~ntg/scripts/bbox_add.pl>

    chmod +x bbox_add.pl

    bbox_add.pl --help

The source code (it's in C) for jpeg2ps is available from http://www.pdflib.com/jpeg2ps/.

Here is a Linux executable (right-click on the link and save it to a file called jpeg2ps): </~ntg/download/jpeg2ps> (of version 1.8; check the link above for updates).
Remember to "chmod +x jpeg2ps" to make it executable.

To create file.eps from file.jpg, the command is:

  jpeg2ps -o file.eps file.jpg

  jpeg2ps file.jpg > file.eps

  jpeg2ps

    </~ntg/scripts/bbox_add.pl>

    chmod +x bbox_add.pl

    bbox_add.pl --help

 The script bbox_add.pl adds a tight bounding box to postscript files.
  It uses gs with the bbox option.
  
 The only mandatory command-line arguments are the names of the files
  to be processed.  Wildcards are allowed (e.g. *.tex will process all
  of the TeX files.)
  
 The options are
   --help                print this help
   --version             version number
   --keep                keep original file, with ".orig" appended to name
   --padding=i           add an "i" point border around box (default is 3)

Maybe the best solution is to generate a postscript file and then use ps2ascii to convert from postscript to ascii. From the man page:

       ps2ascii uses gs(1) to  extract ASCII text from PostScript(tm) or
        Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) files. If no files are specified
        on the command line, gs reads  from  standard input; but PDF input 
        must come from an explicitly-named file, not standard input.  
        If no output file is specified, the ASCII text is written to 
        standard output.

       ps2ascii doesn't look at font encoding, and isn't very good at dealing 
        with kerning, so for PostScript (but not currently PDF), you might
        consider pstotext from     
        http://www.research.digital.com/SRC/virtualpaper/pstotext.html
        You need at least version 1.8g for compatibility with Ghostscript 6.0.
        It is available from http://rpmfind.net/linux/RPM/pstotext.html
        (pick the most recent version).

The homepage for REVTeX 4 is http://publish.aps.org/revtex4/, which includes documentation and the files you'll need (the latter are available as http://publish.aps.org/revtex4/revtex4.tar.gz or http://publish.aps.org/revtex4/revtex4.zip or on CTAN at http://www.ctan.org).

Basically, you just need to unzip the distribution file and put all of the LaTeX files somewhere pointed to by your TEXINPUTS environment variable (e.g., /usr/local/lib/tex/inputs is frequently used).

2001-Sep-24 11:07am furnstahl.1@osu.edu

 ------------------------ begin answer ---------------------------------

You can usually reduce or eliminate Postscript bloat if you understand your Postscript. Computers cannot understand Postscript well enough to do it automatically, because Postscript, like TeX, is a full-fledged programming language. However, two Unix utilities can often fix the problem:

 * convert is a bitmap-based image conversion program which is part of the 
    ImageMagick graphics package. It interconverts nearly 100 different image 
    formats, including several kinds of Postscript. 
 * eps2eps, which is part of the ghostscript package, converts fancy Postscript    
    to simple Postscript. The output is frequently much shorter than the input, 
    even though it is functionally identical. However, it does not help much 
    with bitmaps.

    * The file is a huge bitmap. This is usually because the resolution is  
 substantially higher than necessary, because it is a black-and-white diagram 
 saved as a full-color photograph, or because it is encoded inefficiently (using 
 as many as 12 bytes per pixel). If you include the figure in your TeX document 
 without rescaling it, then you should try:

      convert -density 300x300 fig.old.eps eps2:fig.new.eps

      With these options, convert produces 300dpi output in Postscript Level 2 
 format. Occassionally 600dpi is necessary for fine detail or 150dpi is 
 necessary to further save space; resolutions other than these three are rarely 
 the best choice. If you rescale the figure when you include it in your TeX 
 document, you should change the parameters in convert so that the scaled 
 resolution matches one of these values, or at least so that it's in a 
 reasonable range.

    * The file has a huge header with a lot of macros or fonts. This is typical 
 for commercial illustration programs such as Adobe Illustrator. Try the  
 following conversion:

    eps2eps fig.old.eps fig.new.eps

      You should check the size of the output (preferably after compressing both 
 the old and new figures) to make sure that it really is smaller.

    * The file is an extremely complicated figure with tens of thousands of 
 vertices, each given with many digits of precision. Sometimes you can fix the 
 problem by changing the settings of the program that generated the figure. For 
 example, a 3D plotting program might have an option to omit points that are 
 hidden from view. Alternatively, you can convert it to a bitmap.

 Note that if you create the Postscript judiciously a priori, you might not need 
 to convert it all. For example, the free illustration program xfig produces 
 very lean Postscript output. As another example, it is easy to produce huge 
 files with commercial photography software such as Adobe Photoshop, but more 
 careful use may produce better results. You can also first produce some other 
 format (such as TIFF or JPEG) and then use convert to make the Postscript.

To use it, put

  \usepackage{layout}

  \layout

  \setlength{\textwidth}{13cm}