Re: Presentation tip: was LyX as a presentation tool
On Fri, Apr 6, 2012 at 2:59 PM, Neal Becker wrote: > Thanks for the tip about Impressive! That is pretty Impressive. > Most welcome. :) > Finding/installing deps on fedora 16 was a little bit of a pain (mostly due to > differing package names on different systems) > As for Ubuntu, I maintain a PPA here [1]. Liviu [1] https://launchpad.net/~landronimirc/+archive/impressive -- Do you know how to read? http://www.alienetworks.com/srtest.cfm http://goodies.xfce.org/projects/applications/xfce4-dict#speed-reader Do you know how to write? http://garbl.home.comcast.net/~garbl/stylemanual/e.htm#e-mail
Re: Presentation tip: was LyX as a presentation tool
Thanks for the tip about Impressive! That is pretty Impressive. Finding/installing deps on fedora 16 was a little bit of a pain (mostly due to differing package names on different systems)
Re: Presentation tip: was LyX as a presentation tool
On Thu, Apr 5, 2012 at 9:15 PM, Steve Litt wrote: > I can't help you with your LyX questions because I know little about > the LyX authoring environment, but I can give you one tip that's helped > me a heck of a lot. > > When presenting, I use one of those wireless optical mice they sell for > between $10 and $20. I make sure the mouse is: > > 1) 1000dpi and > 2) Can be used up to 30 meters away. > 3) Has a scroll wheel between the left and right mouse buttons > I was also hesitating to take a high-resolution mouse, but I think I'll go for a laser pointer. I'm only a bit lost on which brand and model to buy. Anyone care to share their experience? > Then I can use the mouse normally while I'm at the computer, but can > walk around the audience using the left and right mouse button to > advance or go back a slide (I use Evince with a PDF presentation, so > this works). Also, I can use the scroll wheel to quickly advance or go > backward. > Personally I use Impressive [1][2] (instead of Evince or any other PDF reader) to display my LyX-created Beamer PDFs. Impressive is, well, impressive. Other than benefiting from left/right mouse clicks to go to next/prev slide, you get many additional features: Page transitions, Overview screen, Highlight boxes, Spotlight effect, zooming, a time tracker, etc. (To some these would be useless eye-candy, to others genuinely useful features. It may well depend on the specific presentation, audience and setting.) There is also an open ticket [3] that, when fixed (patch available), would improve the process: LyX -> Beamer -> Impressive. Regards Liviu [1] http://impressive.sourceforge.net/ [2] http://wiki.lyx.org/LyX/Presentations#toc4 [3] http://www.lyx.org/trac/ticket/8018
Re: LyX as a presentation tool
On Thu, Apr 5, 2012 at 8:56 PM, Ronen Abravanel wrote: > * Slow -- Doing math on slides is bad. Most of the time, the slides are too > crowded to understand, and fill-up at once, and not character by character > as one would like on the board. When I'm typing with the class, I'm keeping > on slow paste, so the can understand the math and follow by it. > Hmm, is there a Beamer command that would force the slides to always display math sequentially, line-by-line? I guess this is SF, but what about word-by-word? Liviu
Re: LyX as a presentation tool
I sometimes use LyX as a presentation tool myself. To what has already been written, I add that for showing how a graph is created step by step I use JPicEdt http://jpicedt.sourceforge.net/site/index.php?language=en which is a WONDERFUL software by itself but whose LaTeX code can be copied in LyX (in an ERT cell) and shown through the preview tool. Francesco Thomas Coffee ha scritto: Hi Ronen, Very interesting ideas --- thanks for sharing. It occurs to me you could get a good start to the 2-projector solution you describe by telling your monitor setup that the screens are above & below, then stretching your LyX window vertically "across" the two. Then when you reach the end of the "right" screen, its contents would be scrolled onto the "left" screen. On the topic of class presentations using LyX, I thought I'd also share my current experience. Since the equations I deal with in my current teaching are too cumbersome to type in real time (even with LyX), I have been using beamer to generate projector slides. However, I really wanted fine-grained control of display to support the kind of interactive development of the material in class that one can achieve with a blackboard. I discovered that (with a little ugliness) it is possible to use some of beamer's more complex visibility constructs (e.g., \only and \onslide) inside math mode, in ways that are not obvious from the beamer documentation. I've attached an excerpt from one of my lectures to illustrate what I mean. This kind of control lets you replicate many aspects of dynamically writing and erasing on the blackboard; and in fact, I have found the process of constructing these sequences a valuable tool in thinking about how to arrange and develop the material in class. (For drawings or additional clarifications, I still use the blackboards adjacent to the projector screen, but there usually few enough of these that I don't need to erase anything.) With fine-grained animation, the lecture presentations end up being hundreds of PDF pages, but I have had no problems with this because: * to generate a print version with no animations, I need only add "handout" under Document >> Settings >> Document Class >> Class options >> Custom * the presentation PDF compresses to nearly the same size as the handout PDF * going forward and backward during presentation can be done very quickly (at least, in the evince document viewer) by simply holding down the Page Up or Page Down key, or using beamer's automatically inserted hyperlinks. As Ronen described, I find the freedom of not writing and erasing on the blackboard greatly improves my ability to face the class and devote attention to leading the presentation and discussion of the material. For a small class, I actually stay seated most of the time to improve the ergonomics. In terms of LyX development, certainly the ability to insert arbitrary ERT in math mode would ease this approach, though this is clearly true for many other things as well, and macros always provide a workaround. Further beamer integration generally could be nice, but none of this is really holding me up. The only idea I've thought about implementing near-term is a setup I saw described somewhere that allows the presenter to have two separate document viewers (one on the laptop, one on the projector) both operating in presentation mode simultaneously, that both advance with a key press. This is not LyX-specific, and would allow the presenter to either (a) play a copy of the presentation "ahead" on the laptop to see what's coming next, or (b) use the "notes" features of beamer or other packages (or use a lecture notes file) to guide verbal delivery. I'd be interested to hear what other instructors have come up with. - Thomas On Thu, Apr 5, 2012 at 2:56 PM, Ronen Abravanel wrote: Hello, I've been using LyX for writing notes and papers for the last ~8 years, and lately I started using lyx in a new form, that might be of an interest to others: As a presentation tool. The general idea is simple: As I teach (modern physics for EE students), instead of writing on a white-board with my awful handwrite, I just type the lesson into a computer connected into a projector. Both text and math. I stand in front of the class, talking to them, looking at them, and type. Occasionally I leave my laptop and draw something on the board, or do some demonstration, For illustrations, I'm either insert them into the document (god bless inset-insert graphics and the minibuffer), or, if the figures are simple, and I find that it may be instructive to draw them gradually, I draw on the board. If I wont to remind the students something from earlier part of the class, I split the display into Left\Right half, and scroll one of them up while continue working on the other half. This methods have many adv
Re: LyX as a presentation tool
Hi Ronen, Very interesting ideas --- thanks for sharing. It occurs to me you could get a good start to the 2-projector solution you describe by telling your monitor setup that the screens are above & below, then stretching your LyX window vertically "across" the two. Then when you reach the end of the "right" screen, its contents would be scrolled onto the "left" screen. On the topic of class presentations using LyX, I thought I'd also share my current experience. Since the equations I deal with in my current teaching are too cumbersome to type in real time (even with LyX), I have been using beamer to generate projector slides. However, I really wanted fine-grained control of display to support the kind of interactive development of the material in class that one can achieve with a blackboard. I discovered that (with a little ugliness) it is possible to use some of beamer's more complex visibility constructs (e.g., \only and \onslide) inside math mode, in ways that are not obvious from the beamer documentation. I've attached an excerpt from one of my lectures to illustrate what I mean. This kind of control lets you replicate many aspects of dynamically writing and erasing on the blackboard; and in fact, I have found the process of constructing these sequences a valuable tool in thinking about how to arrange and develop the material in class. (For drawings or additional clarifications, I still use the blackboards adjacent to the projector screen, but there usually few enough of these that I don't need to erase anything.) With fine-grained animation, the lecture presentations end up being hundreds of PDF pages, but I have had no problems with this because: * to generate a print version with no animations, I need only add "handout" under Document >> Settings >> Document Class >> Class options >> Custom * the presentation PDF compresses to nearly the same size as the handout PDF * going forward and backward during presentation can be done very quickly (at least, in the evince document viewer) by simply holding down the Page Up or Page Down key, or using beamer's automatically inserted hyperlinks. As Ronen described, I find the freedom of not writing and erasing on the blackboard greatly improves my ability to face the class and devote attention to leading the presentation and discussion of the material. For a small class, I actually stay seated most of the time to improve the ergonomics. In terms of LyX development, certainly the ability to insert arbitrary ERT in math mode would ease this approach, though this is clearly true for many other things as well, and macros always provide a workaround. Further beamer integration generally could be nice, but none of this is really holding me up. The only idea I've thought about implementing near-term is a setup I saw described somewhere that allows the presenter to have two separate document viewers (one on the laptop, one on the projector) both operating in presentation mode simultaneously, that both advance with a key press. This is not LyX-specific, and would allow the presenter to either (a) play a copy of the presentation "ahead" on the laptop to see what's coming next, or (b) use the "notes" features of beamer or other packages (or use a lecture notes file) to guide verbal delivery. I'd be interested to hear what other instructors have come up with. - Thomas On Thu, Apr 5, 2012 at 2:56 PM, Ronen Abravanel wrote: > Hello, > > I've been using LyX for writing notes and papers for the last ~8 years, > and lately I started using lyx in a new form, that might be of an interest > to others: As a presentation tool. > > The general idea is simple: As I teach (modern physics for EE students), > instead of writing on a white-board with my awful handwrite, I just type > the lesson into a computer connected into a projector. Both text and math. > I stand in front of the class, talking to them, looking at them, and type. > Occasionally I leave my laptop and draw something on the board, or do some > demonstration, For illustrations, I'm either insert them into the document > (god bless inset-insert graphics and the minibuffer), or, if the figures > are simple, and I find that it may be instructive to draw them gradually, I > draw on the board. If I wont to remind the students something from earlier > part of the class, I split the display into Left\Right half, and scroll one > of them up while continue working on the other half. > > This methods have many advantages > > Over handwriting on the board: > * The main one, the the one lead me to do it: Not forcing the student dose > not have to read my bad handwrite, and I don't spend much time on writing > neatly. > * I'm always facing the class -- I'm not turn my back to them as I write > (only look little bit down, at my screen), so I can see them, and they can > see my face and hear me better. > * When I have complex illustration, I can just add it to the document.. > > And over pre-made slides: > * Saves tim
Presentation tip: was LyX as a presentation tool
On Thu, 5 Apr 2012 21:56:43 +0300 Ronen Abravanel wrote: > Hello, > > I've been using LyX for writing notes and papers for the last ~8 > years, and lately I started using lyx in a new form, that might be of > an interest to others: As a presentation tool. Hi Ronen, I can't help you with your LyX questions because I know little about the LyX authoring environment, but I can give you one tip that's helped me a heck of a lot. When presenting, I use one of those wireless optical mice they sell for between $10 and $20. I make sure the mouse is: 1) 1000dpi and 2) Can be used up to 30 meters away. 3) Has a scroll wheel between the left and right mouse buttons Then I can use the mouse normally while I'm at the computer, but can walk around the audience using the left and right mouse button to advance or go back a slide (I use Evince with a PDF presentation, so this works). Also, I can use the scroll wheel to quickly advance or go backward. I'm not sure how well this would adapt to LyX as the presentation medium, but it's worth a try. HTH SteveT
LyX as a presentation tool
Hello, I've been using LyX for writing notes and papers for the last ~8 years, and lately I started using lyx in a new form, that might be of an interest to others: As a presentation tool. The general idea is simple: As I teach (modern physics for EE students), instead of writing on a white-board with my awful handwrite, I just type the lesson into a computer connected into a projector. Both text and math. I stand in front of the class, talking to them, looking at them, and type. Occasionally I leave my laptop and draw something on the board, or do some demonstration, For illustrations, I'm either insert them into the document (god bless inset-insert graphics and the minibuffer), or, if the figures are simple, and I find that it may be instructive to draw them gradually, I draw on the board. If I wont to remind the students something from earlier part of the class, I split the display into Left\Right half, and scroll one of them up while continue working on the other half. This methods have many advantages Over handwriting on the board: * The main one, the the one lead me to do it: Not forcing the student dose not have to read my bad handwrite, and I don't spend much time on writing neatly. * I'm always facing the class -- I'm not turn my back to them as I write (only look little bit down, at my screen), so I can see them, and they can see my face and hear me better. * When I have complex illustration, I can just add it to the document.. And over pre-made slides: * Saves time -- I do not have to typeset slides in advance (Also: Beamer+Hebrew+LyX is a disaster, so it would force me to turn into OO\MS PP or something like that, which is almost as bad) * Dynamic -- I can write notes and skip\add steps and lines during the class. * Slow -- Doing math on slides is bad. Most of the time, the slides are too crowded to understand, and fill-up at once, and not character by character as one would like on the board. When I'm typing with the class, I'm keeping on slow paste, so the can understand the math and follow by it. But also some disadvantages: * My screen is about 1/4 the size of the whiteboard, and LyX is rather lossy in screen-space. So, instead of just pointing into other parts of the board, I have to split\scroll. * The class's screen reaches to low, So, in order to let the students see the all screen, I switch into fullscreen mode, and then add toolbars from below in order to push the effective screen upwards. * When writing in lyx, one always writes on the bottom part of the screen. There is no good way (after writing more then screen-full of text) to start from top, add lines from beneath and then shift to a "new" screen when I fill it. * It's rather ugly when I write \latexCommand in red, and just when I'm finish its render into symbol. Few points one can improve (mostly theoretical. some will demand big many expanse from my university, and some are "Itches I should scratch when I'll have time to code") * Create half-slide-mode in lyx: Copy one document into another, character by character, When I'm pressing a single key. It will require preparation (but anyhow, I prepared the lesson in advance as a lyx document... I don't remember all by heart , and anyway, it's still a lot easier then creating lyx\beamer slides), but it will save effort and mistakes during the class , while still enable grate flexibility. * I wish I had 2 VGA output and 2 projectors, and LyX would switch from the end of one screen into the top of a new-clean-page at the other screen whenever I fill out the 1st. That would be just perfect :-P. * I should get something higher then the teacher's table to put my laptop on. For now, I have to bend over it, and my back is not happy. Anyway, I'm doing it for a month now, 3 hours a week, and the experience for both me and my students is positive. If you have to teach stuff and don't wont to write on a board, you may consider using lyx. it's fun! - Ronen.