Hi,
> > Many lectures today are given using Microsoft Powerpoint and a beamer.
> > Now I got some of my lectures in tetex format for a printout on
> > transparencies.
> The format is TeX or LaTeX, tetex is just a standard distribution
> of La(TeX) and related software. Thus, this question is not
> exactly for this forum.
Besides LaTeX you also can use ConTeXt (I wouldn't really advice to use
p(l)ain TeX for this purpose).
> * produce PostScript output (via dvips <dvi-file> -o) and
> view the result with `gv' or `ghostview'.
GSView (Windows) has even a full screen mode.
> This is what I do:
> * I use LaTeX (from the tetex distribution) with documentclass
> slides to prepare dvi-slides under Linux. For help on this
> issue you should consult the LaTeX-companion and LaTeX-related
> newsgroups like comp.text.tex.
I use ConTeXt (see http://www.pragma-ade.nl/context/) with presentation
styles derived from one of the 17 predefined styles. You can deside
whether you want to have something like a normal foil or some extra
stuff: transition effects, buttons and navigational stuff, step-by-step
display of a page (using JavaScript feature of AR), using sound and
movies (using the Quicktime plugin, which doesn't work under linux ;-( )
etc.
See $TEXMF/doc/context/base/ms-cb-en.pdf (documentation with button
navigation) and
http://dvi3.tiepmiep.dk/context/general/uptodate/up-001-s.pdf (Shows
mainly forms, but also Tooltips, annotations, stacks (click somewhere
and a object (image etc.) changes, combobox things, "Help windows", i.e.
windows which appear when you click on a button etc. and disappear when
you click another button or the same again. This is nicely documented in
this pdf as well.)
> Disadvantage:
> * Producing slides with LaTeX requires some more effort than with
> PowerPoint.
This depends on the kind of problem and the knowledge of either
programmes.
> * Embedded animations are not possible (you can view this as an advantage,
> too).
Well, the movie files I mentioned above can be embedded into the page,
but not in the document (one pdf file plus $n$ movie and sound files).
> The program acroread has the following advantages over other
> ps/pdf-viewers on Linux:
> * It has a full-screen modus.
> * It has thumbnails.
> * It has working anti-aliasing for every color-combination
> (smoothing of fonts) while the OpenSource solutions just use
> the x11alpha device which does not work with other background
> colors than white. PowerPoint does not know about these things
> at all.
Well my Acrobat Reader/Linux can do the same thing (XPDF and Ghostscript
solutions are not that bad either.)
Note: With AR you can decide how you navigate in fullscreenmode:
a) manually using the arrowkeys
b) automatically using the full screen preferences. (Advance every ...
seconds, advance on every click, loop after last page; default
transition (replace, box in etc, this can be overruled from within
TeX...)
> * It works the same way under MacOS and Windows.
Plus systems where the Unix versions of Acrobat Reader work (e.g.
FreeBSD/Intel).
Moreover Powerpoint doesn't work under Unix at all.
Tobias
PS: For ConTeXt question, mail (pref. in Engl.) to the mailinglist
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