elpres - electronic presentations
with (pdf/Lua)LATEX
Volker Kiefel1
v1.0.1
August 10, 2021
Contents
1 Introduction
2 Installation
3 Usage
3.1 A minimalistic example presentation
3.2 Essential elements of an elpres presentation
3.3 Alternatives to TEX's justified paragraphs
3.4 Vertically compressed lists
3.5 Slide layout: changes in slide title, footer, page numbers
4 Enhancements to elpres
4.1 Use of named colors of xcolor
4.2 Include graphics files
4.3 Arrange text and pictures in two (or more) columns
4.4 Incremental slides (overlays)
4.5 Navigation symbols
4.6 Run multimedia content from a presentation
4.7 Prepare a "handout" from a presentation
4.7.1 LATEX article document with a series of single-page pdf-files included
4.7.2 Create handout with the pdfpages package
4.7.3 Convert presentation pdf-file directly into handout file with pdfjam
4.8 Create presentations with hypertext elements
4.9 Fill background of a presentation with bitmaps
4.9.1 Wallpaper package
4.9.2 Eso-pic package
4.10 Presentation schemes
5 Recipes for use of elpres
5.1 Colored text boxes
5.1.1 Text boxes with colorbox, fcolorbox
5.1.2 Text boxes with the tcolorbox package
5.2 Inactivate overlays commands
5.3 Convert an elpres-presentation (PDF) into an Impress (LibreOffice) or Powerpoint presentation
5.4 The pdfpc-viewer: add notes
6 License
7 Version history
Index
1 Introduction
The elpres class is intended to be used for
presentations on a computer screen, a
beamer or a projector. It is derived from LATEX's article class and
may be used with LATEX, pdfLATEX (and LuaLATEX).
The default "virtual paper size" of document pages produced by this class:
width=128mm, height=96mm corresponds to a 4:3 (width:height) aspect
ratio.
Other aspect ratios for widescreen monitors may be selected by class
options.
The elpres class requires that the ifthen,
fancyhdr,
hyperref,
graphicx,
xcolor
and geometry packages are available on the TEX system: these
packages are loaded automatically by the elpres class.
Enhancements to elpres are easily made available by other packages,
these include overlay support for incremental slides (package
overlays) and slides
with a background from a bitmap (wallpaper, eso-pic
packages). Predefined color/layout schemes for elpres presentations
can be acitivated with
\usepackage (details can be found in
in section 4.10)
This manual is intended to support the user with "recipes". Use of
elpres with its default settings should be simple, additional aspects
including overlay functions, use of colors, graphics files, "handout
documents" are described in section 4. Many code snippets
have been included in this manual.
They can be used in users' presentation files.2
Some extensions described in this manual work only with pdf-files
which should preferrably be compiled with pdfLATEX or LuaLATEX.
2 Installation
If the elpres package has already been
installed with the TEX-system nothing needs to be done. If an updated
version shall be installed (or if the preinstalled elpres version
does not work properly3),
elpres.cls, all *.sty,
*.png and *.eps files should be copied into a directory,
where the TEX-system can find it: if an old elpres version of the
existing TEX system shall be replaced by the current version, please copy
these into the appropriate position in the "local" texmf
directory tree (e. g. ~/texmf/tex/latex/elpres) and this manual
(elpres-manual.pdf) to ~/texmf/doc/latex/elpres, where
/texmf may be /texmf-local or an
analogous directory.
Then, the files database should be updated by entering (in case of a TEX Live
installation) the command:
mktexlsr ~/texmf-local
or you may enter texhash ~/texmf-local4.
Other TEX-systems e. g. MiKTEX have
their own package updating mechanisms. The elpres manual file should be
accessible with the command "texdoc elpres". If this
still calls the old version of the manual, the command "texdoc -l elpres"
will prompt you to select either the old or the new version of the manual.
3 Usage
The class is used with
\documentclass[options]{elpres}
Elpres-specific options: font selection:
tmrfont (Times Roman), helvetfont
(Helvetica), cmfont (Computer Modern) and sansfont (Sans
Serif: default). The option nofonts (no font selection)
is intended for use of elpres with LuaLATEX
with its own font selection mechanisms.
Options for different screen aspect ratios: 4x3
(default), 16x9, 16x10.
The option bulletsymb selects $\bullet$ symbols
instead of the default itemize-environment
symbols in all four levels,
ballsymb is effective together with the presentation
schemes (section 4.10)
and provides alternative symbols for the itemize environment.
The option navisymb
adds a small field with symbols for navigation to the right
bottom area of the presentation.
Options of the article class are also available for
elpres presentations,
e. g. 10pt, 11pt, 12pt for
selection of font size.
Elpres-specific commands:
\distance vertically adjusts text on a slide.
The \auvimm5
command inserts a link to an external audio or video file.
Two commands: \fromlinktext and \totargettext
can be used for internal links within a presentation.
With \slidetitlecolor, the text color of slides (psli)
can be changed.
With the command \pagenrconst, the page number of
the current slide can be set to the page number of the previous slide.
Elpres-specific environments:
the environments psli and rsli define "slides" in
elpres; citemize, cenumerate and
cdescription provide vertically compressed lists.
3.1 A minimalistic example presentation
The following code (minimal.tex)
may be used for your first "experiments" by adding
features described in later sections.
\documentclass[12pt,pdftex,4x3]{elpres}
\usepackage[latin1]{inputenc}
\usepackage[document]{ragged2e}
% \usepackage{elpreswhitebluescheme}
% \usepackage{elpresbluelightgrayscheme}
% \usepackage{elpresgrayscheme}
% \usepackage{elpreswhiteredscheme}
\usepackage{elpreswhitetealscheme}
\begin{document}
\begin{titlepage}
\centering
\distance{1}
{
\Huge \bfseries \textcolor{eptitlecolor}{Title of the presentation} \par
}
\vspace{1.3ex} \large
Author\\[2ex]Institution
\distance{2}
\end{titlepage}
\begin{psli}[Title of Page]
The first page: \texttt{psli} environment
\begin{itemize}
\item first line in an itemized list
\item second line in an itemized list
\end{itemize}
\end{psli}
\begin{rsli}
The second page: \texttt{rsli} environment
\begin{enumerate}
\item no title
\item not centered vertically
\end{enumerate}
\end{rsli}
\end{document}
The preamble of the same presentation for LuaLATEX would read:
% LuaLaTeX: Please use utf-8 encoding!
\documentclass[12pt,nofonts,4x3]{elpres}
\usepackage[document]{ragged2e}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\setmonofont{TeX Gyre Cursor} %% based on 'Courier'
\setsansfont[Scale=0.92]{Tex Gyre Heros} %% similar to 'Helvetica'
\setmainfont{TeX Gyre Termes} %% 'Roman' style serif font
\renewcommand{\familydefault}{\sfdefault}
% \usepackage{elpreswhitebluescheme}
\usepackage{elpreswhitetealscheme}
% \usepackage{elpresbluelightgrayscheme}
% \usepackage{elpresgrayscheme}
% \usepackage{elpreswhiteredscheme}
\begin{document}
% ...
\end{document}
The use of LuaLATEX with elpres is heavily recommended
due to the superior font selection mechanisms.
You may copy the code examples from this manual more easily from the
.html version of this manual available at
http://vkiefel.de/elpres/elpres-manual.html.
Testing of the elpres installation
With this example you may check, if elpres has been installed
correctly in your TEX-system: copy the listing of minimal.tex into
a file, add the class option ballsymb:
\documentclass[12pt,pdftex,4x3,ballsymp]{elpres}
...
and process it with pdflatex. The line
\usepackage{elpreswhitetealscheme} should not be commented out,
i. e. the package elpreswhitetealscheme should be active.
If processing of minimal.tex results in a message like
... `ep-ball-04' not found ...
the TEX-system does not find the file ep-ball-04.png in the
appropriate place. In such a situation it is recommended
- either to install the current version of elpres in the
correct subdirectories of the "local" texmf-directory, details
are described in section 2
- or to copy the small elpres graphics files ep-ball-nn.eps
ep-ball-nn.png into a directory of the tex-branch of the
local texmf-directoty tree (followed by an update
see of TEXs files database, for details see section
2). The files may be obtained
from the elpres project page
http://vkiefel.de/elpres.html 6
- or to copy the required image file into the current project
directory.
The problem sometimes arises as soon as TEX-distributions do not install
elpres correctly. For details see README.md in the archive
elpres.zip, which may be obtained from ctan.org.
3.2 Essential elements of an elpres presentation
The title page slide can be created with
the titlepage environment (or rsli, see below), LATEX's
\maketitle command is not available.
Slides may be created with the
psli-environment7, you may add
the title of the slide with the optional parameter.
The contents of the slide are centered vertically.
Another environment generating a slide is
rsli8:
slides are written
without title,
contents are not vertically centered.
The \distance{number} command allows to introduce vertical space into
slides constructed with the rsli and titlepage environments.
You should use pairs of \distance{} commands with numbers indicating
the relative height of empty space, see the titlepage in the example above.
The use of footnotes on slides is often problematic, if they cannot be
avoided, the footmisc package is recommended: the perpage
option resets numbering for each new slide. For a presentation, the
symbol option allows to use symbols instead of numbers.
After inserting a new footnote, numbers or symbols are correctly
inserted only after a second run of LATEX.
3.3 Alternatives to TEX's justified paragraphs
By default, LATEX produces justified paragraphs with lines of equal length,
this may often not be appropriate for the usually very short lines of text
in presentations. The LATEX \raggedright command
has its own
deficiencies: by inhibiting hypenation in texts with rather short lines,
the right margin will often look too
ragged. A solution is to use the \RaggedRight command of the
ragged2e package.
3.4 Vertically compressed lists
As the spaces between lines may be too great with the itemize
environment,
the elpres package provides a "vertically compressed"
citemize-environment:
\begin{citemize}
\item one
\item two
\end{citemize}
Similarly, a cenumerate and a cdescription environment may
be used.
Another solution for the customization of itemize
environments is given by the enumitem package. Therefore
\usepackage{enumitem}
should be added to the preamble, and a comma-sperated list of parameters
parameters can be added in the format:
\begin{itemize}[parameter-list]
...
\end{itemize}
The "vertically compressed" list can then be obtained with
\begin{itemize}[nosep]
\item one
\item two
\end{itemize}
Similarly, the enumitem package is also able to modify the
enumerate and description environments.
3.5 Slide layout: changes in slide title, footer, page numbers
By default, the text color of the titles of
psli-slides is black,
it may be changed by redefining the "value" of the \slidetitlecolor{}
command like
\slidetitlecolor{blue}
in the preamble. Of course, you may also use the named colors of the
xcolor package (see section 4.1).
By default the page number appears at the right bottom of the slide
(in the "footer" in the terminology of the fancyhdr package)
this position can be addressed by the \rfoot{} command: the
\rfoot{}, \cfoot{} and \lfoot{} commands can be used
by the author of a presentaton.
However, access to the header fields defined by fancyhdr
is blocked9.
If you wish to change the position of the page number in the footer,
you can overwrite the default page number with an "empty" \rfoot{}
command and put it to the center or the left margin of the footer
(\cfoot{\footnotesize \thepage} or
\lfoot{\footnotesize \thepage}). These "footer fields"
are also suitable to enter a logo
visible on all pages (in form of a graphics file using
\includegraphics[]{}) or text with the name of the speaker's
institution.
The user may also use predefined presentation schemes with defined
colors and layout elements (e. g. symbols used in list envoronments), details
are described in section 4.10.
4 Enhancements to elpres
4.1 Use of named colors of xcolor
The elpres class automatically loads the xcolor package.
Color related commands may therefore be used with names defined by
colorx. They are however only accessible in groups
(dvipsnames, svgnames, x11names). As an example,
the color Indigo is available in svgnames. If you wish
to use it you will have to enter svgnames as elpres
class option:
\documentclass[11pt,16x9,svgnames]{elpres}
This option is then automatically "handed over" to the
xcolor package.
The complete lists of named colors are found in the xcolor manual.
4.2 Include graphics files
Graphics files/pictures can be included with the
includegraphics-command of the graphicx-package. Please be
aware that the dimensions of the pages are 128mm x 96mm and
therefore included graphics are scaled appropriately. A safe way to generate a
page with a picture could be (with pict.png as the name of the
graphics file):
\usepackage[pdftex]{graphicx} % (in preamble)
...
\begin{rsli}
\centering
\distance{1}
\includegraphics[width=0.9\textwidth,%
height=0.9\textheight,%
keepaspectratio=true]{pict.png}
\distance{1}
\end{rsli}
The \includegraphics[]{} comannd requires to select the correct device
driver related option (e. g. pdftex or dvips)
(documentclass).
4.3 Arrange text and pictures in two (or more) columns
Text and graphics may be arranged in two or more columns with
minipage environments:
\begin{minipage}[b][0.8\textheight][t]{0.5\textwidth}
\colorbox{white}{%
\includegraphics[width=0.9\textwidth]{graphics-file.png}}
\end{minipage}
\begin{minipage}[b][0.8\textheight][t]{0.48\textwidth}
\footnotesize
\begin{citemize}
\item ...
\item ...
...
\end{citemize}
\end{minipage}
Details on the minipage environment may be found in the LATEX
documentation.
4.4 Incremental slides (overlays)
If the contents of slides are to be made visible step
by step this can be achieved by a series of output PDF or (PS) files (carrying
the same page number) usually called overlays. It may also be of
interest to change a highlighting color in a series of overlays. This is most
easily done by using the excellent overlays package written by
Andreas Nolda.
To generate a series of four overlays sequentially showing four lines of a
list:
- load the overlays package in the preamble
- put a psli or rsli slide environment into an
overlays (or fragileoverlays) environment
- enter the number of overlays as the first parameter to the
overlays environment
- enter text contents with the visible command with the range
of overlays showing this text content
A simple example:
% to be added in preamble
\usepackage{overlays}
...
\begin{overlays}{4}
\begin{psli}[Title of slide]
\begin{itemize}
\visible{1-4}{\item first item of list}
\visible{2-4}{\item second list item}
\visible{3-4}{\item 3rd list item}
\visible{4}{\item final list item}
\end{itemize}
\end{psli}
\end{overlays}
...
The following example uses the alert command to highlight lines
sequentially:
\begin{overlays}{4}
\begin{psli}[Title of slide]
\begin{itemize}
\alert{1}{\item first item of list}
\alert{2}{\item second list item}
\alert{3}{\item 3rd list item}
\alert{4}{\item final list item}
\end{itemize}
\end{psli}
\end{overlays}
The last example shows short text fragments which are shown sequentially using
the only command:
\begin{overlays}{4}
\begin{rsli}
\only{1}{a short text, which will be replaced \ldots }
\only{2}{\dots by a second \ldots}
\only{3}{\ldots and a third \ldots}
\only{4}{\ldots and a final text.}
\end{rsli}
\end{overlays}
The "hidden" text contents are written by overlays in the same
color as the background, default is white. If you use a different background
color, you have to change the color of the hidden text as well by assigning the
background color to the color name background (understood by the
overlays package). In the following example you define a light
yellow as background:
% (in the preamble)
\definecolor{myyellow}{rgb}{0.96,0.98,0.72} % define color
\definecolor{background}{named}{myyellow} % color assigned to
% hidden text
\pagecolor{myyellow} % color of slide background
If you use one of the presentation schemes described in section
4.10, the necessary adjustments
for the background color will be made automatically.
For more details on overlays, see the documentation of the package.
Sometimes it is desirable to prepare two or more consecutive
slides with the same page
number independent
of the overlays package ("manual overlays slides"). Therefore,
the page number of the current slide
can be set to the page number of the previous slide/page
with the command \pagenrconst.
4.5 Navigation symbols
With the navisymb option of elpres a panel with navigation
symbols appears
in the right lower corner of the presentation:
<< < > >> ← → [n]
These commands ( << : jump to the first page,
< : go to the previous page, > : go to the next page,
>> : jump to the last page, ←:
go back in history, →: go forward in history,
[n]: prompt for a
page number)
work with Adobe Acrobat Reader (Windows), and (with the exception of
←, → and [n])
with evince (Linux).
Some of these functions also work in presentation-mode
of the "internal" PDF-viewer in recent versions of the
Firefox-browser (Linux, Windows).
4.6 Run multimedia content from a presentation
In this section inclusion of video and audio files
into a presentation will be described. With the
\auvimm{}{}
command described below you will
be able to lauch an external application for playing the video or audio
file. This will work in many situations for video and audio files
on Windows (Adobe Acrobat) and Linux (e. g. using
evince and
)
systems in fullscreen mode.
Under certain conditions it is possible to define a "poster area" on a
slide and the pdf viewer starts (after clicking with the mouse pointer into
this area) the
presentation of the video within this frame.
The advantage of this technique is that it avoids that
window with the external application is started.
On Linux systems the pdfpc
viewer allows this, a detailed description
is shown below. In both sitauations, however, the multimedia file is not
incorprated into the pdf-file and must be available on the computer
at the time of the presentation, ideally in the same directory as the
.pdf-file.
The command \auvimm{text}{media-file} inserts text with a link
("poster"), which allows to start the external default application for an
audio or video media file (media-file). This worked flawlessly on
the computers of the author of this manual with Adobe Acrobat Reader (Windows)
and with evince (Linux).10
An example for using this command:
\auvimm{[sound-file]}{./audiofile.mp3}
This produces the (text-based) "button" or "poster" [sound-file].
You may also insert an image file as a poster with a graphics file using
\includegraphics:
\auvimm{\includegraphics{/path/to/poster.png}}{./audiofile.mp3}
If you hit the poster area with the mouse pointer, it will launch the default
application for audio files in a seperate window. This should be possible
even if the pdf-viewer works if fullscreen-mode at the time of presentation.
If this does not work, it may be necessary to
insert as "launch" command:
\auvimm{[video-file]}{run:./videofile.mp4}
This approach requires that you keep the presentation file
together with the multimedia files in the same folder, also at
the time of
the presentation. On an unknown computer system (where you have to show
your presentation) you should test this aspect of your presentation. Sometimes
a call to an external program might be blocked due security reasons in Acrobat
Reader.
This \auvimm{}-command should be considered experimental.
Its behavior depends on the pdf-viewer and the configuration of the OS.
On Linux systems, the pdfpc
pdf-viewer11 allows
presentation of a video embedded into a "poster area"12
on a slide
without starting the external viewer in a separate window. This is supported
with the \pdfpcmovie{}{}-command from the
pdfpc-movie-package and with \auvimm{}{}
using the "run:./video-file" launch-command. An example
with \auvimm{}{}:
\auvimm{\includegraphics[width=0.4\textwidth]{poster.png}}{run:./video.mp4}
This pdfpc-specific extension seems to work only for video files,
but not for audio files. A possible solution is to convert an audio file into
a "video format", e. g. with the ffmpeg program.
4.7 Prepare a "handout" from a presentation
In advance of a lecture it is often expected that you prepare a "handout"
from your presentation with more than one pages on a printed page. Therefore
you have several options, three of
them are described here.
If a presentation contains overlay-slides generated with the overlays
package as described in section 4.4, it should be recompiled
with the commands described in section 5.2
added to the preamble
in order to inactivate the overlays-specific commands.
4.7.1 LATEX article document with a series of single-page pdf-files included
One solution to this problem is (1) to generate a series of single-page
pdf-files and (2) to create a pdfLATEX document with the single
pages included.
(1) can be done with gs (the ghostscript program):
gs -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=page_%03d.pdf in.pdf
with in.pdf as the initial presentation. The syntax of gs
is described in detail on the ghostscript
website13.
On Windows systems the name of the ghostscript command may be
gswin32c.exe or gswin64c.exe.
An alternative to gs is the pdftk tool:
pdftk in.pdf burst output page_%03d.pdf
The syntax of pdftk is explained in the documentation
(pdftk -help).
(2) an example for a LATEX document which can serve as handout:
\documentclass[12pt]{article}
\usepackage[pdftex]{graphicx}
\usepackage[latin1]{inputenc}
\usepackage[a4paper,hmargin=2.4cm,top=24mm,bottom=28mm]{geometry}
\newcommand{\PictScaleFact}{0.45}
\begin{document}
\centering
\fbox{\includegraphics[width=\PictScaleFact\textwidth]{page_001.pdf}}
\hspace{5mm}
\fbox{\includegraphics[width=\PictScaleFact\textwidth]{page_002.pdf}}
\\[2ex]
\fbox{\includegraphics[width=\PictScaleFact\textwidth]{page_003.pdf}}
\hspace{5mm}
% ...
\fbox{\includegraphics[width=\PictScaleFact\textwidth]{page_008.pdf}}
% ...
\end{document}
4.7.2 Create handout with the pdfpages package
Another, more comfortable option is to use the pdfpages package.
Here, it is not necessary to split up the presentation into single pages.
An example (in "portait format") which generates pages with 2x4 slides
(all slides except slide 2) using the
\includepdf[]{} command:
\documentclass[12pt]{article}
\usepackage[a4paper,hmargin=2cm,bottom=3.2cm]{geometry}
\usepackage{pdfpages}
\begin{document}
\includepdf[pages={1,3-last},nup=2x4,frame=true,%
scale=0.78,%
pagecommand={\thispagestyle{plain}}]{presentation.pdf}
\end{document}
Details on the optional parameters of \includepdf can
be found in the documentation of the pdfpages package. This code:
\documentclass[12pt,landscape]{article}
\usepackage[a4paper,hmargin=2cm,bottom=3.2cm]{geometry}
\usepackage{pdfpages}
\begin{document}
\includepdf[pages={1,3-last},nup=3x2,frame=true,%
scale=0.78,%
pagecommand={\thispagestyle{plain}}]{presentation.pdf}
\end{document}
generates pages in "landscape format" with 3x2 slides.
4.7.3 Convert presentation pdf-file directly into handout file with pdfjam
With the following command:
pdfjam --nup 2x4 --frame true --scale 0.9 -o new.pdf in.pdf '1-4,6-22'
pdfjam14
creates a "handout" PDF document (new.pdf) fom
in.pdf with the slides nr. 1-4,6-22
arranged in two columns and four rows.
With the additional option "-frame true",
pdfjam draws a box
around each slide. More details can be found in the pdfjam
man page and the project
website15.
4.8 Create presentations with hypertext elements
You may use two commands \fromlinktext{}{} and \totargettext{}{}
for "hypertext features". As an example: as you normally will not insert
\section{}-like commands and therefore do not generate a "table of
contents"-like page or a menu in elpres-presentations, you are able
define links with:
\totargettext{text}{link-label}
which can be addressed by
\fromlinktext{text}{link-label}
If you use these commands to generate a menu page (as a hyperlinked
table of contents) with items pointing to
specific slides:
link-label acts as label, text in the
\fromlinktext command is converted to a link (e. g. on a menu-page).
If you click on this text "button", you jump to
the text labelled with
\totargettext; link-label has to be identical in a
\fromlinktext and \totargettext pair,
text in the link
and the target, of course need not to be identical.
The default for the link border color is red, it may be changed with
\hypersetup{}, a command from the hyperref
package16.
The option for the color of the frame around the link is
linkbordercolor,
colors must be defined whith three figures [0..1] according to the RGB
color model:
\hypersetup{linkbordercolor={0.6 0.6 0.6}}
This defines a light gray color for the link border, more details on
\hypersetup{} are
described in the documentation of the hyperref package.
4.9 Fill background of a presentation with bitmaps
4.9.1 Wallpaper package
To create a slide background with a graphical wallpaper
background using bitmap files you may use the wallpaper
package17.
Load the wallpaper package with
\usepackage{wallpaper}
in the preamble. In order to generate a background based on bitmap
file background.png, enter
\CenterWallPaper{1}{background.png}
before the contents of the presentation18.
This works best with bitmaps with an appropriate aspect ratio, in the case of
an 4x3 screen format a bitmap picture of 640x480 pixel would fit perfectly.
Moreover bitmap files may be
used as tiles as described in the wallpaper documentation like
\TileSquareWallPaper{4}{background.png}
More details on this topic may be found in the wallpaper
documentation.
4.9.2 Eso-pic package
Another package which allows you to paint the background with a picture is
eso-pic19:
\usepackage{eso-pic}
...
\AddToShipoutPicture{
\includegraphics[height=\paperheight]{background.png}
}
\AddToShipoutPicture{} puts the picture on every page,
\AddToShipoutPicture*{} puts it on to the current page,
\ClearShipoutPicture clears the background beginning with the current
page.
Details of eso-pic's commands can be found in the documentation.
4.10 Presentation schemes
Elpres provides predefined presentation schemes:
color and layout schemes which are applied to a presentation with
usepackage{}. Their naming follows the convention
elpres...scheme, an
example is elpreswhiteredscheme.20
These elpres-schemes also support incremental slides with the
overlays package.
Moreover, these schemes define color names
which may be used by the author of a presentation:21
- eptextcolor
- "normal text color" (default values for
documents without
presentation scheme included in elpres.cls: black)
- ephighlightcolor
- color, which may be used for highlighting
text (default:
dark red)
- eptitlecolor
- color of the title of slides, may be used to
highlight the
title in the title slide (default: dark red)
Presentation schemes available in the current version of elpres:
- elpresbluelightgrayscheme
- dark blue background of slides;
eptextcolor: light gray;
eptitlecolor: turquoise;
ephighlightcolor: yellow;
symbols in itemize environment: pale blue bullets;
highlighted elements in enumerate and description
environments: pale blue
- elpresgrayscheme
- gray background of slides;
eptextcolor: dark gray;
eptitlecolor:
dark green; ephighlightcolor: dark red;
symbols in itemize environment: gray bullets; highlighted elements
in enumerate and description environments: dark green
- elpreswhitebluescheme
- white background of slides;
eptextcolor: blue-black;
eptitlecolor: blue;
ephighlightcolor: dark red;
symbols in itemize environment: blue bullets; highlighted elements
in enumerate and description environments: blue
- elpreswhiteredscheme
- white background of slides;
eptextcolor: red/brown-black;
eptitlecolor: dark red;
ephighlightcolor: dark blue;
symbols in itemize environment: red bullets;
highlighted elements in enumerate and description
environments: red
- elpreswhitetealscheme
- white background of slides;
eptextcolor: black-teal;
eptitlecolor: teal;
ephighlightcolor: dark red;
symbols in itemize environment: blue bullets; highlighted elements
in enumerate and description environments: dark teal
In all of these schemes, the colors of borders for internal and external
links have been adjusted.
5 Recipes for use of elpres
5.1 Colored text boxes
Colored text boxes often help the presentation author to highlight small text
fragments and to make slides more "readable" and more attractive.
5.1.1 Text boxes with colorbox, fcolorbox
A simple method for colored text boxes uses the minipage environment
and the colorbox or fcolorbox
commands (xcolor package):
\begin{psli}[Slide with a textbox]
\begin{center}
\colorbox{eptitlecolor}{\begin{minipage}{0.85\textwidth}
\centering \color{white} \vspace{2ex}
{\Large
Text centered in a colorbox
} \par
\vspace{2ex}
\end{minipage}}
\end{center}
\end{psli}
The advantage of these simple colored text boxes: they are compatible
with incremental slides using the overlays package.
5.1.2 Text boxes with the tcolorbox package
The tcolorbox package provides great support for colored boxes. A
minimal example:
\begin{psli}[Slide with a textbox]
\begin{tcolorbox}[colframe=eptitlecolor!95!black]
\textcolor{eptitlecolor}{This is a textbox generated with the
\texttt{tcolorbox} package}
\tcblower This the lower part of the tcolorbox
\end{tcolorbox}
\end{psli}
An example with a titled colored textbox:
\begin{psli}[Slide with a textbox]
\begin{tcolorbox}[colback=eptitlecolor!10!white,%
colframe=eptitlecolor!95!black,%
title=Heading of a textbox]
This is another \textbf{tcolorbox}.
\tcblower
Here, the lower part of the box.
\end{tcolorbox}
\end{psli}
The manual of the tcolorbox provides perfect instruction for the use
of this package.
These text boxes may yield problems
with incremental slides using the overlays package.
5.2 Inactivate overlays commands
If a pesentation has been prepared with overlay slides (using the
overlays) package, the LATEX source code will contain
\visible, \only and \alert commands and
overlays and fragileoverlays environments.
Sometimes, it is desirable to generate a version of such a presentation
without overlays effects, for example for preparation of a printed handout
(see section 4.7).
The effect of these overlay-specific instuctions can be
inactivated with these commands:
\overlaysoff
\alertsoff
which should be written into the preamble following
\usepackage{overlays}. This works with v2.12 (and probably later
versions) of overlays. With earlier versions you may copy the
commands
\renewenvironment{overlays}[1]{}{}%
\renewenvironment{fragileoverlays}[1]{}{}%
\renewcommand{\visible}[2]{#2}%
\renewcommand{\only}[2]{#2}%
\renewcommand{\alert}[2]{#2}%
into the preamble following \usepackage{overlays}, however,
inactivation of \only by this method
has a different effect, so it is recommended to
update the overlays package.
5.3 Convert an elpres-presentation (PDF) into an Impress (LibreOffice) or Powerpoint presentation
Sometimes it is unclear, if organizers of a (scientific) meeting allow
presentations with .pdf-files or insist on files in Powerpoint
format. This is an unpleasant situation for a lecturer, but in such a situation
it is better, to be
prepared.
There is no elegant way for a reliable solution.
First, you may use one of the free or commercial online conversion
tools (intended to convert .pdf into
.ppt or .pptx-files). Results are often not satisfactory.
An alternative, more reliable way preferred
by the author of this manual:
- convert the .pdf-file of the presentation into a series of bitmap
image files, (e. g. in .png format)
- import these image .png files into "empty" slides
of an Impress
(LibreOffice or OpenOffice) presentation and save the presentation in
.odp, .ppt or .pptx-Format
Details on step 1 - generate .png images:
Please copy the following two
commands (please ignore the line-breaks in the lines
beginning with "gs")22
into a short shell
script (Windows: a .bat or .cmd script) and "run" or execute the shell
script:
gs -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dDEVICEWIDTHPOINTS=793.7
-dDEVICEHEIGHTPOINTS=595.3 -dPDFFitPage -sOutputFile=temp.pdf input.pdf
gs -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=png256 -r300 -dTextAlphaBits=4
-sOutputFile=page_%03d.png temp.pdf
Please do not forget to adjust the name of the input file
(input.pdf in the script above).
The first command adjusts the page size of the .pdf-file to
28 x 21 cm (which is written into the temporary file
temp.pdf:
this format avoids resizing of the images in LibreOffice (see below)).
The second command generates a series of .png-files:
page_001.png, page_002.png ... page_0nn.png.
Instead of the png256 driver, png16m can be used.
On Windows systems the name of the ghostscript command is
gswin32c or gswin64c (instead of gs).
If you wish a higher resolution of the .png images,
change -r300 to
-r600.
The option -dTextAlphaBits=4 improves font
antialiasing.23
Details on step 2 - Import .png images:
Open an empty presentation with LibreOffice Impress, adjust the appropriate
slide format (e. g. 4:3), import the .png files with
Insert / Image
into consecutive empty slides.24. The presentation can now be saved
in the format of Impresss (.odp) or
one of the Microsoft Powerpoint formats (.ppt or .pptx).
5.4 The pdfpc-viewer: add notes
The pdf-vierwer pdfpc for
Linux25
(see section 4.6)
is a comfortable program which
allows output of presentations to two monitors or a monitor and a
beamer/projector. The normal presentation window is assigned to the
beamer/projector, the other output for the presenter shows the actual slide,
the next slide and an area for notes. As you are viewing a certain slide,
press n to start editing a note. The editing mode is stopped with
Esc. The text of these notes is stored in the file
filename.pdfpc. Further information can be found in the man
page.
6 License
This class is distributed under the LATEX Project Public License
(LPPL) which may be downloaded from
http://www.latex-project.org/lppl.txt. No warranty is provided for this
work (as stated in the LPPL).
7 Version history
v0.1 (19.6.2004): initial version. v0.2 (1.9.2004): page
numbers now changed to footnotesize, left and right margins slightly changed,
cenumerate and cdescription environments added.
v0.2a (19.9.2004): Section "License" added to the documentation.
v0.2b (17.10.2004): Documentation completed: description of the
\distance{} command included. v0.2c (28.11.2004):
Documentation completed (section 4.8 added). v0.2d
(25.12.2004): Documentation completed (section 4.9
added). v0.2e (15.04.2005): Documentation completed (sections
4.9.2 and 4.7 added). v0.3
(12.08.2005): new (class) options for font selection: tmrfont (Times
Roman), helvetfont (Helvetica), cmfont (Computer Modern),
sansfont (Sans Serif: default). Documentation updated, sections
4.2 and 4.3 added. v0.4
(20.01.2018): New class options for different screen aspect ratios
4x3, 16x9, 16x10; "compressed" list environments
modified; documentation completed: packages for use with elpres:
enumitem (alternative list environments), overlays (overlay
support: incremental slides); section 4.7 was completely
rewritten. v0.4a (24.01.2018): Documentation completed.
v0.5 (12.07.2020): New class options: nofonts (no font
selection) and navisymb (inserts a panel of symbols for navigation),
new commands: auvimm (generates a link to external audio, video files),
\fromlinktext and \totargettext (create links within a
presentation). Documentation has been partly rewritten. v0.6
(19.08.2020): Access to the fancyhdr "header fields"
(\lhead{}, \chead{} and \rhead{}) is now explicitly
blocked. New command \slidetitlecolor{} for the text color of titles
in psli-slides. New: style files for presentation schemes added.
Documentation has been significantly completed: sections
3.5, 4.1, 4.10 and
5 added, section 2 on installation
rewritten. v0.7 (20.02.2021): parts of the manual (this file) have
been rewritten and an index has been included. The command \pagenrconst
has been added. v0.8 (28.02.2021): Installation instructions have
been updated in section 1 and detailed instructions were
added to README.md. Section 5.2 was updated. A
bug in the elpres...scheme.sty files was fixed (incorrect value for
\labelitemiv).
v0.9 (01.08.2021): New class option bulletsymb added, an
archive elpres.tds.zip is added for ctan.org upload.
v1.0: Class option ballsymb added, manual updated.
v1.0.1: Corrected upload to ctan.org
Index (showing section)
- Acrobat pdf viewer, 4.6
- aspect ratio, see screen aspect ratio
- audio files, see multimedia files
- \auvimm, 4.6
- bulletsymb class option,
3.0
- cdescription environment,
3.4
- cenumerate environment,
3.4
- citemize environment,
3.4
- color schemes, see presentation schemes
- columns, 4.3
- \distance, 3.2
- elpres
- commands, 3.0
- environments, 3.0
- options, 3.0
- evince pdf file viewer,
4.6
- footer fields on slides,
3.5
- \fromlinktext, 3.0
|
- ghostscript, 4.7
- graphics files, 4.2
- handout, 4.7, 4.7
- hypertext elements, 4.8,
4.8
- Impress (LibreOffice) presentation,
5.3
- includegraphics,
4.2
- incremental slides, see overlays
- installation, 2.0,
2.0
- logo graphics file, 3.5
- LuaLATEX, 1.0, 3.0,
3.1
- minimalistic example, presentation,
3.1
- minipage environment,
4.3
- multimedia files, 4.6,
4.6
- navigation symbols panel,
4.5,
4.5
- notes for slides, pdfpc viewer,
5.4
- overlays, 4.4, 4.4
|
- page number, 3.5
- \pagenrconst, 4.4
- pdfLATEX, 1.0
- pdfpc viewer, 4.6,
5.4
- pdftk, 4.7
- Powerpoint presentation,
5.3
- presentation schemes, 4.10,
4.10
- psli environment, 3.2
- \raggedright, 3.3
- recipes for elpres presentations,
5.0
- rsli environment, 3.2
- schemes, color, see presentation schemes
- screen aspect ratio, 1.0
- simple example, presentation,
see minimalistic example, presentation
- slides in elpres, 3.0
- \slidetitlecolor, 3.5,
3.5
- text boxes, colored, 5.1
- title page, 3.2
- title, text color, 3.5
- \totargettext, 3.0
|
- video files, see multimedia files
- wallpaper background, 4.9,
4.9
|
Footnotes:
1volker dot kiefel at freenet dot de,
http://vkiefel.de/elpres.html
2To make copying easier,
this manual is also available as .html document on the
elpres website (http://www.vkiefel.de/elpres.html)
3for details see the description on checking the
elpres-installation in section
3.1
4The location
for the "local", manually updated class and package files may be different,
depending on the TEX system and the OS.
5for audio video media
6http://vkiefel.de/elpres/elpres-ball-image-files.zip
7psli: plain
slide
8rsli: raw slide
9If you enter
rhead, chead
or lhead, elpres will issue
an error message. Use of the header fields will generate unwanted effects
on page layout due to fancyhdr.
10The
auvimm command uses the href
command of the hyperref package
11https://pdfpc.github.io/: pdfpc - A
presenter console with multi-monitor support for PDF files
12e. g. defined
by a bitmap image with the same aspect ratio as the video
13https://www.ghostscript.com/doc/current/Use.htm
14which regerettably is only available on
Linux or other Unix-like systems,
on Windows systems, the procedure described
above in section 4.7.2 can be used as alternative
15https://github.com/DavidFirth/pdfjam/blob/master/README.md
16both, totargettext and
fromlinktext are
are redefinitions of commands from the hyperref package
17written by Michael H.F. Wilkinson and available on CTAN
18i. e. following
begin{document}
19written by Rolf Niepraschk and available on CTAN
20the name of the
corresponding style or package file is elpreswhiteredscheme.sty
21Color names for use
by the presentation author start with ep...
22 . e. "gs ... input.pdf" should
be entered as one line and "gs ... temp.pdf" should be entered as a
second line
23Details can be found in the documentation of gs
https://www.ghostscript.com/doc/current/Use.htm
24Menu
structure of LibreOffice v6.4
25https://pdfpc.github.io/
File translated from
TEX
by
TTH,
version 4.15.
On 12 Aug 2021, 09:27.