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<head>
<title>UK TeX FAQ -- question label slidecls</title>
</head><body>
<h3>Producing slides</h3>
<p/>Lamport’s original LaTeX had a separate program (SliTeX) for
producing slides; it dates from the age when colour effects were
produced by printing separate slides in different-coloured inks, and
overlaying them, and was just about acceptable back then. When
LaTeX2e came along, the reason SliTeX had to be a separate
program went away, and its functionality was supplied by the
<i>slides</i> class. While this makes life a little easier for
system administrators, it does nothing for the inferior functionality
of the class: no-one “who knows” uses <i>slides</i> nowadays.
<p/>The ‘classic’ alternatives have been <i>seminar</i> and <i>foils</i>
(originally known as FoilTeX). Both were originally designed to
produce output on acetate foils, though subsequent work has provided
environments in which they can be used with screen projectors (see
below).
<p/>The advent of Microsoft <i>PowerPoint</i> (feeble though early
versions of it were) has created a demand for “dynamic” slides —
images that develop their content in a more elaborate fashion than by
merely replacing one foil with the next in the way that was the norm
when <i>slides</i>, <i>foils</i> and <i>seminar</i> were designed.
<p/>The <i>prosper</i> class builds on <i>seminar</i> to provide dynamic
effects and the like; it retains the ability to provide PDF for
a projected presentation, or to print foils for a foil-based
presentation. The add-on package <i>ppr-prv</i> adds “preview”
facilities (that which is commonly called “hand-out printing”). The
<i>HA-prosper</i> package, which you load with <i>prosper</i>,
mends a few bugs, and adds several facilities and slide design styles.
The (relatively new) <i>powerdot</i> class is designed as a
replacement for <i>prosper</i> and <i>HA-prosper</i>, co-authored
by the author of <i>HA-prosper</i>.
<p/><i>Beamer</i> is a relatively easy-to-learn, yet powerful, class that
(as its name implies) was designed for use with projection displays.
It needs the <i>pgf</i> package (for graphics support), which in
turn requires <i>xcolor</i>; while this adds to the tedium of
installing <i>beamer</i> “from scratch”, both are good additions to
a modern LaTeX installation. <i>Beamer</i> has reasonable
facilities for producing printed copies of slides.
<p/><i>Talk</i> is another highly functional, yet easy-to-learn class
which claims to differ from the systems mentioned above, such as
<i>beamer</i>, in that it doesn’t impose a slide style on you. You
get to specify a bunch of slide styles, and you can switch from one to
the other between slides, as you need. (The class itself provides
just the one style, in the package <i>greybars</i>: the author
hopes users will contribute their own styles, based on
<i>greybars</i>.)
<p/><i>Ppower4</i> (commonly known as <i>pp4</i>) is a
<i>Java</i>-based support program that will postprocess
PDF, to ‘animate’ the file at places you’ve marked with
commands from one of the <i>pp4</i> packages. The commands don’t
work on PDF that has come from <i>dvips</i> output; they
work with PDF generated by PDFLaTeX, VTeX LaTeX, or
<i>dvipdfm</i> running on LaTeX output.
<p/><i>Pdfscreen</i> and <i>texpower</i> are add-on packages that
permit dynamic effects in documents formatted in “more modest”
classes; <i>pdfscreen</i> will even allow you to plug
“presentation effects” into an <i>article</i>-class document.
<p/>
<p/>A more detailed examination of the alternatives (including examples
of code using many of them) may be found at Michael Wiedmann’s fine
<a href="http://www.miwie.org/presentations/presentations.html">http://www.miwie.org/presentations/presentations.html</a>
<p/>ConTeXt users will find that much (if not all) of what they need is
already in ConTeXt itself; there’s a useful summary of what’s
available, with examples, in
<a href="http://wiki.contextgarden.net/Presentation_Styles">http://wiki.contextgarden.net/Presentation_Styles</a>
<dl>
<dt><tt><i>beamer.cls</i></tt><dd>Download all of <a href="ftp://cam.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/beamer.zip">macros/latex/contrib/beamer</a> (<a href="ftp://cam.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/beamer.tar.gz">gzipped tar</a>, <a href="http://www.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/beamer/">browse</a>)
<dt><tt><i>foils.cls</i></tt><dd><a href="ftp://cam.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/foiltex.zip">macros/latex/contrib/foiltex</a> (<a href="ftp://cam.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/foiltex.tar.gz">gzipped tar</a>, <a href="http://www.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/foiltex/">browse</a>)
<dt><tt><i>greybars.sty</i></tt><dd>distributed with <a href="ftp://cam.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/talk.zip">macros/latex/contrib/talk</a> (<a href="ftp://cam.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/talk.tar.gz">gzipped tar</a>, <a href="http://www.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/talk/">browse</a>)
<dt><tt><i>HA-prosper.sty</i></tt><dd><a href="ftp://cam.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/ha-prosper.zip">macros/latex/contrib/ha-prosper</a> (<a href="ftp://cam.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/ha-prosper.tar.gz">gzipped tar</a>, <a href="http://www.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/ha-prosper/">browse</a>)
<dt><tt><i>seminar.cls</i></tt><dd><a href="ftp://cam.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/seminar.zip">macros/latex/contrib/seminar</a> (<a href="ftp://cam.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/seminar.tar.gz">gzipped tar</a>, <a href="http://www.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/seminar/">browse</a>)
<dt><tt><i>pgf.sty</i></tt><dd><a href="ftp://cam.ctan.org/tex-archive/graphics/pgf.zip">graphics/pgf</a> (<a href="ftp://cam.ctan.org/tex-archive/graphics/pgf.tar.gz">gzipped tar</a>, <a href="http://www.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive/graphics/pgf/">browse</a>)
<dt><tt><i>powerdot.cls</i></tt><dd><a href="ftp://cam.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/powerdot.zip">macros/latex/contrib/powerdot</a> (<a href="ftp://cam.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/powerdot.tar.gz">gzipped tar</a>, <a href="http://www.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/powerdot/">browse</a>)
<dt><tt><i>pp4</i></tt><dd><a href="ftp://cam.ctan.org/tex-archive/support/ppower4.zip">support/ppower4</a> (<a href="ftp://cam.ctan.org/tex-archive/support/ppower4.tar.gz">gzipped tar</a>, <a href="http://www.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive/support/ppower4/">browse</a>)
<dt><tt><i>ppr-prv.sty</i></tt><dd><a href="ftp://cam.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/ppr-prv.zip">macros/latex/contrib/ppr-prv</a> (<a href="ftp://cam.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/ppr-prv.tar.gz">gzipped tar</a>, <a href="http://www.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/ppr-prv/">browse</a>)
<dt><tt><i>prosper.cls</i></tt><dd><a href="ftp://cam.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/prosper.zip">macros/latex/contrib/prosper</a> (<a href="ftp://cam.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/prosper.tar.gz">gzipped tar</a>, <a href="http://www.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/prosper/">browse</a>)
<dt><tt><i>talk.cls</i></tt><dd><a href="ftp://cam.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/talk.zip">macros/latex/contrib/talk</a> (<a href="ftp://cam.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/talk.tar.gz">gzipped tar</a>, <a href="http://www.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/talk/">browse</a>)
<dt><tt><i>texpower</i></tt><dd><a href="ftp://cam.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/texpower.zip">macros/latex/contrib/texpower</a> (<a href="ftp://cam.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/texpower.tar.gz">gzipped tar</a>, <a href="http://www.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/texpower/">browse</a>)
<dt><tt><i>xcolor.sty</i></tt><dd><a href="ftp://cam.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/xcolor.zip">macros/latex/contrib/xcolor</a> (<a href="ftp://cam.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/xcolor.tar.gz">gzipped tar</a>, <a href="http://www.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/xcolor/">browse</a>)
</dl>
<p/><p>This question on the Web: <a href="http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=slidecls">http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=slidecls</a>
</body>
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