219 lines
8.5 KiB
Markdown
219 lines
8.5 KiB
Markdown
---
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Title: Tools for making and giving presentations
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Date: 2024-11-03
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Author: Fabrice
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Category: Tips
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Tags: presentation, vim, latex
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Slug: presenting
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Header_Cover: ../images/covers/pts24-talk.jpg
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Summary: Some of the tools I use for making and giving presentations.
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lang: en
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---
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# Introduction
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Over the past year, I have to give quite a few presentations in different
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contexts: internal to the company, for open-source conferences, for business
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conferences…
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I used these different opportunities to refine a bit my presentation tools, and
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I just summarize them here for curious people. Please note that this blog post
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will only cover the tooling needed to produce slides, not what to put inside.
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This page may be updated, for instance if I start using yet another tool for
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slide making that I think is worth mentioning. If you have subscribed to this
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blog’s [RSS feed], you will be notified of future updates.
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# Making Slides
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For slide making, I prefer using tools that separate the content from the actual
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design. I’m thus not using fancy WYSIWYG tools for that. If you are not
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interested in that, you can already skip to the [presenting slides] section.
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## LaTeX Beamer
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As explained in the [typst article], I’m mostly using [LaTeX] to produce/typeset
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documents, and presentations are not an exception. For this purpose I’m using
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[beamer].
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For this purpose, my [vim setup for LaTeX] proved to be pretty useful,
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especially with the “compilation on save” feature. It allows me to have an
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already set up text editor for LaTeX without having to fiddle and twiddle with
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multiple setups. However, the backward search is not very accurate with beamer
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slides.
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### Overlays and Graphics
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The main advantage, besides my familiarity with [LaTeX], lays in the [overlay]
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system in beamer, that is quite powerful and provides a very precise way to
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display elements. This overlay mechanism also compounds well with [TikZ] to
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design animated graphics.
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For instance in the example below, I can show the top part of the graph
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initially, then the bottom, and change the name of the last node for the second
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slide. That can be easily adjusted to have more steps in the process.
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```latex
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…
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\usetikzlibrary{positioning}
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…
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\begin{tikzpicture}
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\tikzstyle{node} = [draw, rectangle, fill=blue!40, minimum height=2em]
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\tikzstyle{arrow} = [->, >=stealth, very thick]
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\node[node] (start) {Data};
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\node[node, right=1cm of start] (a1) {Enc($\cdot$)};
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\node<2->[node, below=5mm of a1] (a2) {Sig($\cdot$)};
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\node<1>[node, right=1cm of a1] (stop) {Encrypted Data};
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\node<2->[node, right=1cm of a1] (stop) {Encrypted and Signed Data};
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\draw[arrow] (start) -- (a1);
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\draw<2->[arrow] (start) -- (a2);
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\draw[arrow] (a1) -- (stop);
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\draw<2->[arrow] (a2) -- (stop);
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\end{tikzpicture}
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```
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Resulting in:
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{width=66%}
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Moreover, you have access to the whole latex ecosystem, especially those for
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neat illustrations such as [tikzpingus].
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**Note:** I feel compelled to say that the above technique is unsafe under fairly
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reasonable assumptions. Long story short you should sign first *then* encrypt
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and not do both in parallel. Please see [this paper](https://ia.cr/2001/045)
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from the Crypto 2001 conference if you want a more detailed explanation.
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### Customisation
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It is also quite easy to customise slides with beamer. For instance, with
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[metropolis], from its
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[documentation](https://ctan.tetaneutral.net/macros/latex/contrib/beamer-contrib/themes/metropolis/doc/metropolistheme.pdf),
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section 8 describes where to find specific colours. As for the fonts, if you are
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using xelatex/lualatex, a simple `\setmainfont` suffices to redefine it.
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For instance, if I want to have the alert text in orange:
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```latex
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\setbeamercolor[alerted text]{fg=orange}
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```
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### Drawbacks
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However, LaTeX starts to slow down quickly, especially with a lot of [TikZ]
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drawings… On documents, it’s not really an issue as it is possible to cache the
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drawings with the `externalize` tikz library. However, when mixing overlays and
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TikZ, it starts to [need some
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tweaks](https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/78955/use-tikz-external-feature-with-beamer-only).
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I never included them in my workflow as they make TikZ drawings more complicated
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than they are.
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## Typst Touying
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## Pandoc and reveal.js
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[reveal.js] is a javascript framework to produce clean and dynamic slides. My
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settings to generate them are liberally inspired by [Pablo
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Coves](https://pcoves.gitlab.io/blog/pandoc-markdown-revealjs/).
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[Pandoc] on the other hand is a document converter tool that supports a very
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extensive spectrum of formats and syntaxes. My most use case is to convert
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markdown to some other reflowable format (usually HTML, and sometimes EPUB).
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Using both in conjunction allows for quick and dynamic presentations which don’t
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require _accuracy_ in placements. That may be the case for lightning talks for
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instance. The main advantage compared to the two above solutions is that
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[reveal.js] takes advantage of web browser capabilities to produce dynamic
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transitions. Those are otherwise hard to get from PDFs (some people made custom
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PDF reader for that).
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I know that it’s also possible to use [pandoc] to produce directly [beamer] slides
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for instance, thus benefiting from the simpler [Markdown] syntax while having
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[LaTeX] as an engine. I however find this approach too rigid. It is indeed easy
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to feed some LaTeX‑specific commands via the YAML header, e.g., for styling.
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Unfortunately, when the need arises to do some specific positioning on a slide
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for example, then we end up with some markdown-TeX mix that I found deeply
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inelegant. That’s why I usually stick to LaTeX (or more recently [typst]) to
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produce PDFs, as these tools are designed with an awareness of the page layout
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(which blends well into the language). This property is not the case with
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[Markdown], which is a markup language for text formatting (not typesetting).
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### Ease of use
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One nice thing about [pandoc] + [reveal.js] slide making is that, for simple
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intends and purpose, there are very little structural codes (contrary to
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[beamer] for instance where you have to define several variables before
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starting).
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From the following code, you can start making a presentation:
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```yaml
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---
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title: Example Presentation
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subtitle: It’s all about presenting
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author: Fabrice Mouhartem
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date: 2025-01-29
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theme: solarized
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---
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```
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Then run:
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```sh
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pandoc --standalone -t revealjs -o output.html input.md
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```
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And that’s all… well, it’s just a title slide and an empty slide, but it’s the
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beginning of a **wonderful** presentation.
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Then, similarly to [typst] + [touying], a level 1 heading creates a title slide,
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and a level 2 heading spawns a new content slide. You can also spawn a new slide
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with three hyphens (`---`).
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### Speaker view
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One of the advantage of [reveal.js] is the built-in [speaker view]. It spans a
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pop-up with useful pieces of information for the speaker: a chronometer, a preview of the
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upcoming slide and notes if there are any.
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Its behaviour is similar to what you can have with `pdfpc` that I’ll show later
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for PDF slides.
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### Customisation
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- List of default [reveal.js styles]
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- Simple customisation with CSS:
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<https://gist.github.com/jsoma/629b9564af5b1e7fa62d0a3a0a47c296#styling> see
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<https://github.com/hakimel/reveal.js/blob/master/css/theme/template/exposer.scss>
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as well for exposed variables.
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- However, in standalone mode, changing the font does not work well…
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- Create custom theme: <https://github.com/hakimel/reveal.js/blob/master/css/theme/README.md>
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- <https://github.com/Chouhartem/reveal.js/tree/cryptpad-theme>
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# Presenting Slides {#presenting-slides}
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## wl-mirror
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## pdfpc
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[RSS feed]: /feeds/all.rss.xml
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[typst]: https://typst.app/
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[touying]: https://touying-typ.github.io/
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[typst article]: {filename}../software/typst.md
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[presenting slides]: #presenting-slides
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[LaTeX]: https://www.latex-project.org/
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[beamer]: https://ctan.org/pkg/beamer
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[vim setup for LaTeX]: {filename}../software/nvim-latex.md
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[overlay]: https://www.overleaf.com/learn/latex/Beamer_Presentations%3A_A_Tutorial_for_Beginners_(Part_4)%E2%80%94Overlay_Specifications
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[TikZ]: https://www.ctan.org/pkg/pgf
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[tikzpingus]: https://github.com/EagleoutIce/tikzpingus
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[reveal.js]: https://revealjs.com/
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[reveal.js styles]: https://revealjs.com/themes/
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[pandoc]: https://pandoc.org/
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[metropolis]: https://github.com/matze/mtheme
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[markdown]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markdown
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[speaker view]: https://revealjs.com/speaker-view/
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