Tech blog of WEN Yang : TeX

Beamer is so cool

wenyang — Fri, 17 Jun 2005 05:40:00 GMT

I created my first PDF-format presentation, using LaTeX + Beamer. The slides were for my oral presentation of the general exam. I passed the exam, by the way.

A few comments about the use of figures...

For better quality, vector formats, such as EPS or PDF, are prefered. Figures created by Matlab can be directly save as EPS. Outputs generated GNUPlot can also be redirect to an EPS file. Using EPS files in TeX is as simple as

\includegraphics[height=0.5\textheight]{demand_supply_interaction.eps}

We can compile TeX files into DVI files and then convert them into PDF files. We might prefer to use pdflatex if we use Beamer, however, because Beamer changes many settings in order to create an document that fit for presentation and the DVI file we generate will look ugly. Using pdflatex, on the other hand, will give us the direct output we want.

One subtle but important change for using pdflatex, unfortunately, is that it does not support EPS file! We need to convert EPS files into PDF files. MikTeX provides a small program named as "epstopdf" to do that for us. Note that some EPS files do not have the bounding box calculated. Then one thing we can do is to use GSView PS->EPS command and select the "Automatically calculate Bounding Box" option to create another EPS suitable for conversion. Of course we can convert the EPS file into JPG, which is supported by pdflatex directly. But JPG is not a vector format and the output may not be as clear.

For figures/graphs generated by Excel or other program, which do not provide a good way to output EPS files, our best option is directly print the figures into PDF, using a PDF printer. Alternatively, we can use the "Print to file" option for any PS printer to get a PS file and then use GSView to do the rest of the job, following the same procedures as described above.

Once we have a PDF figure file, inserting it into the TeX file is as easy as the EPS case. For example,

\includegraphics[height=7cm]{fig/NetworkSize.pdf}

One thing that I have not yet figured out is how to create a suitable handout. I used the handout mode, which worked fine for most slides except the one with "\againframe<2->[plain]{zooms}". I used that command for zooming in to see details of the original figure.

beamer 中文书签的解决方法

wenyang — Tue, 24 May 2005 20:05:00 GMT

Use pdflatex directly:
pdflatex filename.tex
pdflatex filename.tex
gbk2uni filename.out
pdflatex filename.tex
latex->dvips->ps2pdf:
\documentclass[cjk,hyperref={dvips}]{beamer}

By bethoven @ TeX.NewSMTH

File conversion: TeX -> DVI -> PS -> PDF

wenyang — Wed, 27 Apr 2005 22:25:00 GMT

TeX -> dvi:

latex ... (use emacs auctex package)

might need to run bibtex to generate bibliography (aux file need, so run latex first!)

bibtex file_name_without_extension

after running bibtex, should run latex again!

dvi -> ps:

in windows, use dvips, -t to specify paper size.

dvips -t "Letter" filename.dvi

in linux,

dvips filename.dvi -Ppdf

ps -> pdf:

in windows, use gsview, menu, convert ...

in linux,

ps2pdf filename.ps

dvi -> pdf:

(This direct approach may have better result, such as preserve text search ability)

in windows, use dvipdfm (in some cases, dvipdfmx), “-c” to gnore color specials (for B&W printing), “-o filename” to set output file name, “-p papersize” to set papersize (letter, legal, ledger, tabloid, a4, or a3, default is [letter])

dvipdfm filename.dvi

in linux,

dvipdf [ options ] input.dvi [ output.pdf ] ...

TeX -> pdf:

work for "simple" tex file. e.g., pure text, no (eps) figures...

pdflatex filename.tex