121 lines
4.2 KiB
Markdown
121 lines
4.2 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 use this opportunity to refine a bit my presentation tools, and I just
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summarize them here for curious people.
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This page may be updated, for instance if I start using [typst] for slide
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making. If you have subscribed to this blog’s [RSS feed], you will be notified
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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 “on save compilation”. However, the backward search is not
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very accurate with beamer 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, especially with [TikZ] to 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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### 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 describe 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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## reveal.js
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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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[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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