Manual for version 0.8.1
1. Quick start
Type latex2slides in a terminal.
Then choose the following options from the menues:
-
File -> Open. Choose a TeX or LaTeX file to process.
-
Slides -> Make. Ask the program to make the slides.
-
Slides -> Show. The program will run netscape and show you the slides.
Your slides are now stored at: $HOME/.latex2slides/ .
If you are not happy with the slides, you can go to
Settings -> Configure and change your settings (image resolution,
image magnification, etc.). Make your slides again and see if they look better.
2. Invoking latex2slides from the command line
2.1 Synopsis
latex2slides
[OPTION] [FILE]
2.2 Description
latex2slides
is a simple graphical program that produces a set of HTML/JPEG slides
from a LaTeX (or TeX) source FILE. The program first produces a
multipage postscript, using
latex
(or
tex
) and
dvips.
Each postscript page is converted to a JPEG image using ImageMagick's
convert.
The program then makes one HTML page for each JPEG (or slide),
and an index.html page. As a result, each slide in your slide
presentation corresponds to one of the postscript pages you would
obtain running
latex
on the LaTeX source.
Alternatively, the source can be a multipage
postscript, DVI or PDF
FILE, and the image format for the slides can be set to PNG.
2.3 Options
- -a, --author NAME
-
set slides author's NAME
- -c, --console
-
run in console, do not open graphic interface
- -C, --css CSSFILE
-
set CSSFILE as the cascading style sheet
- -h, --help
-
display this help and exit
- -m, --magnification M
-
set M as image magnification (default=100)
- -O, --orientation OPT
-
where OPT is one of the following:
portrait
portrait-upside-down
landscape
landscape-upside-down
- -o, --output DIRECTORY
-
set output DIRECTORY for slides
- -r, --resolution R
-
set R as postscript resolution (default=95)
- -s, --source S
-
where S is one of the following:
autodetect
latex
tex
dvi
ps
pdf
- -t, --title TITLE
-
set presentation TITLE
- -v, --version
-
display version information and exit
2.4 Examples
latex2slides
Open the Graphical User Interface (GUI)
latex2slides --title "A Title Here" file.tex
Choose given title, select file.tex and open GUI
latex2slides -c --title "A Title Here" file.tex
Same as above, but run in console instead of opening GUI.
2.5 Environment
HOME
Used to locate the default home directory
LATEX2SLIDES_HOME
Path to top-level installation directory (only needed in case
of a custom installation)
2.6 Files
HOME/.latex2slides/
Local directory for user
HOME/.latex2slides/latex2slides.log
Log file
3. Using the graphical interface
Latex2slides is intended to be an easy to use graphical program.
Even though there are several command line options are available (see above),
part of the functionality is only available through the Graphical User
Interface (GUI).
After invoking the program (see previous section),
a window (the GUI) will appear on the screen.
The following options are available through the menues.
3.1 Menues
- File
- Open
- Choose a LaTeX (or TeX, or multipage postscript, DVI or PDF)
file to make slides from.
- Open new
- Same as above, but also reload user preferred settings
from disk.
- Open Sample
- Choose a LaTeX sample file to make slides from.
- Exit
- Quit the program.
- Slides
- Make
- Actually make the slides, and store them in the output directory.
Each set of slides overwrites the previous one.
- Make one
- Same as above, but only make the first slide. Useful when you are
exploring different settings for your slides
- View
- Display the slides using the web browser chosen in Settings
(netscape is the default).
- View
- Slides
- Same as Slides -> View (see above).
- Log file
- Display the log file
- Settings
- Configure
Files and directories
- Source file type
- The program tries to autodetect the
file type by default; if it fails, choose LaTeX or TeX here.
- Output directory
- The directory where the slides will be stored.
- Cascading style sheet
- Latex2slides uses a CSS, named style.css. You may want
to modify it to customize the look of your presentations. If you
do so, you can set here the name and location of your CSS file.
Slide options
- Image resolution
- Postscript resolution, in pixels per inch. Higher resolution gives
nicer but bigger (thus slower to download) slides. This option
corresponds to -density in ImageMagick's convert.
- Image magnification
- Adjust the size of the slides' images; magnification=100% leaves the
slides unaltered.
- Presentation title
- To appear in the index.html page and in every html page.
- Presentation author
- To appear in the index.html page.
- Orientation
- Page orientation in the latex source (portrait, landscape, etc.)
- Image format
- Either PNG or JPG.This is the format for the slides themselves.
Slides layout
- Navigation bar style
- You can choose a graphical bar (using icons for navigation) or a
text based one.
- Navigation bar position
- Choose where to place the navigation bar (top, bottom or both)
- Info bar position
- The info bar shows the slide title and slide number.
Choose where to place it (top, bottom, both or none)
- Header
- A header for all your slides. You may use HTML here.
- Footer
- Idem above. Note that you can display graphics with the
"img" tag.
Misc. options
- Web browser
- Choose your favorite web browser (netscape, konqueror, etc.)
Actions
- Apply
- Use the selected options.
- Save
- Use the selected options, but also save them
to disk as user preferred settings . The presentation
title is not saved.
- Reset
- Use program defaults for all the options.
- Cancel
- Quit the Configure Dialog without applying any change.
- Help
- Documentation and information about latex2slides.
4. Customizing your slides
You can change the look of your slides in many ways:
- The index.html produced by latex2slides is really a template. You
may want to modify it once you are happy with the slides set.
- To improve the visual quality of your slides, try different values
of Image resolution and Image magnification.
- Customizing the CSS for the slides, as shown below.
4.1 The Cascading Style Sheet
Part of the look of the slides is controled by a Cascading Style Sheet
(CSS). The easiest way to customize it to your needs is:
- Make your slides as usual
- Edit the "style.css" file in the output directory, until the slides
look as you please.
- Copy this "style.css" file to a safe place (for instance ~/.style.css)
(latex2slides always overwrites the output directory)
- If you want to use this CSS for all your presentations, choose it
as your user preferred CSS in the Configure Dialog
(see above).
5. Misc. notes
- Using landscape mode is very convenient for a screen
based presentation, since most likely you will not have to scroll
with the browser when displaying the slides.
- Depending on your presentation, latex2slides (in fact convert)
may be very resource-demanding. You may want to call latex2slides
with a high niceness, i.e. nice -10 latex2slides
- It is always a good idea to have a hard-copy of your slide
presentation just in case :-).
6. Bugs and limitations.
The best approach for publishing LaTeX documents in the web is to use a
translator from LaTeX to HTML (for the text) + MathML (for the equations).
However, as for Mid 2001 MathML is not fully supported by web browsers.
Also, LaTeX to HTML translators not always give a nice
output when the LaTeX source imports images. This is why
a program such as latex2slides makes sense. My recommendation is:
only use latex2slides for web publishing when LaTeX to HTML translators
fail to do the job. On the other hand, if you want to give a
computer-based slide presentation, latex2slides may be fine in most cases.
7. See Also
convert (ImageMagic's) - LaTeX2HTML - TtH (TeX to HTML)
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