powerdot
powerdot
Hendri Adriaens
v1.7 (2021/05/19)
Abstract
powerdot is a presentation class for LATEX that allows for the quick and easy de-
velopment of professional presentations. It comes with many tools that enhance
presentations and aid the presenter. Examples are automatic overlays, personal
notes and a handout mode. To view a presentation, DVI, PS or PDF output can be
used. A powerful template system is available to easily develop new styles. A LYX
layout file is provided.
Contents
1 Introduction 2 9 Creating your own style 27
9.1 General information . . . . 27
2 Setting up the presentation 2 9.2 Defining palettes . . . . . . 28
2.1 Document class options . . 3 9.3 Defining templates . . . . . 29
2.2 Setup options . . . . . . . . 6
9.4 Controlling setup . . . . . . 29
3 Making slides 10 9.5 Main components . . . . . 30
3.1 The title slide . . . . . . . . 10 9.6 Slide toc . . . . . . . . . . . 32
3.2 Other slides . . . . . . . . . 10 9.7 Miscellaneous options . . . 33
9.8 Template presets . . . . . . 34
4 Overlays 11 9.9 The background . . . . . . . 34
4.1 The \pause command . . . 11 9.10 Title slide, titles and sections 35
4.2 List environments . . . . . . 12 9.11 Testing the style . . . . . . . 35
4.3 The \item command . . . . 13
4.4 The \onslide command . 14 10 Using LYX for presentations 35
4.5 Relative overlays . . . . . . . 15 10.1 How to use the layout . . . 36
10.2 Support of syntax . . . . . . 37
5 Presentation structure 15 10.3 Compiling with LYX . . . . . 37
5.1 Making sections . . . . . . . 15 10.4 Extending the layout . . . . 38
5.2 Making an overview . . . . 16
11 Questions 39
6 Miscellaneous 17
11.1 Frequently Asked Questions 39
6.1 Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
11.2 Mailinglist . . . . . . . . . . 40
6.2 Empty slides . . . . . . . . . 17
6.3 Bibliography slide . . . . . . 18 12 Source code documentation 41
6.4 Verbatim on slides . . . . . 18
6.5 The \twocolumn command 19 References 41
∗ This class can be downloaded from the CTAN mirrors: /macros/latex/contrib/powerdot. See
powerdot.dtx for information on installing powerdot
into your LATEX distribution and for the license of
this class.
1
1 Introduction
This class gives you the possibility to easily create professionally looking slides. The
class is designed to make the development of presentations as simple as possible so
that you can concentrate on the actual content instead of keeping yourself busy with
technical details. Of course, some knowledge of LATEX is still required though.
This class builds on and extends the prosper class [9] and the HA-prosper package
[1]. The HA-prosper package was initially intended to extend prosper and correct some
bugs and problems of that class. As developments on that package progressed, it was
found that unfortunately, not all of the problems could be overcome with the package.
That discovery was the start of a new project set up to make a new class to replace
the prosper plus HA-prosper combination. You’re currently reading the result of that
project.
The remainder of this section will be devoted to giving a feel of what the powerdot
presentation source looks like and giving an overview of this documentation.
The document structure of a presentation is always the same. You can find it in the
example below.
\documentclass[<class options>]{powerdot}
\pdsetup{<presentation options>}
\begin{document}
\begin{slide}{a slide}
Contents of the slide.
\end{slide}
\section{first section}
\begin{slide}[<slide options>]{another slide}
Contents of the slide.
\end{slide}
\begin{note}{personal note}
The note.
\end{note}
\end{document}
There are several elements that define the document structure. First of all, the class
accepts some class options that control the output of the class, for instance, paper
type and style. These class options will be discussed in section 2.1. Then there are
presentation specific options which control some of the elements of the presentation
globally, for instance, the footers. These will be discussed in section 2.2.
Once the setup has been decided on, you can use the slide environment to produce
slides (see section 3) and the note environment to produce notes that go with the slides
(see section 6.1). You can use overlays to display material in steps. This is described in
section 4. The \section command provides a way to structure your presentation. This
is discussed in section 5. Section 7 will show an overview of the styles that come with
this class and the characteristics of each style. Section 8 will tell you more about how to
produce output. This section contains important information on required packages.
Section 9 is mostly interesting for people that want to develop their own style for
this class or want to modify an existing style. Section 10 explains how LYX [6] can be
used to create powerdot presentations. This documentation concludes with a section
devoted to questions (section 11), like ‘Where can I find examples?’. It also tells you
where to turn to in case your questions are still not solved.
2
2.1 Document class options
We will start with the class options that are typed in the \documentclass command
as a comma-separated list. For each option, the preset value1 will be mentioned in the
description. This is the value that will be used if you decide to not give a value to the
option or not use the option at all.
option This options controls the kind of output that we want to produce. The preset value
mode is present.
mode=present
This mode is used when you want to create the actual presentation. It will enable
overlays and transition effects. You can read more about overlays in section 4.
mode=print
This mode can be used when printing the slides including their visual markup,
but without any overlay or transition effects.
mode=handout
This mode will produce a black and white overview of your slides that can be
used to make personal notes on, for distribution to students, a personal guide
during your talk, etcetera.
nohandoutpagebreaks
By default, the handout mode produces a document with two slides per
page. If you want to fit more slides on a page, specify this option in
the \documentclass command and powerdot will let LATEX decide on the
places to insert a page break, namely when a page is full.
nohandoutframes
By default, the handout frames the slides. This option will remove the
frames around slides on handouts.
option This option has five possible values. The preset value is screen.
paper
paper=screen
This is a special format with screen optimized ratio (4/3). The actual page di-
mensions will be 8.25 inch by 11 inch. This paper format is not available for
print or handout mode. In these modes, powerdot will switch to a4 paper and
put a warning that it did this in the log file of your presentation.
paper=a4paper
paper=letterpaper
paper=smartboard
paper=169
3
Some important information with respect to paper size, compiling and viewing pre-
sentations is available in section 8.
option This controls the orientation of the presentation. The preset value is landscape.
orient
orient=landscape
The presentation will be in landscape format. This value is not available in hand-
out mode. In that mode, powerdot will switch to portrait orientation and will
warn you about this in the log file.
orient=portrait
This produces slides in portrait format. Notice that not all styles support por-
trait orientation. Please refer to section 7 for information about which styles do
support the portrait orientation.
option This controls the production of slides and notes. The preset value is slides.
display
display=slides
display=slidesnotes
This will typeset both the slides and the notes in your presentation. See also
section 6.1 for more information about notes.
display=notes
option size
size
This is the size of the normal text font in points. Possible values are 8pt, 9pt, 10pt,
11pt, 12pt, 14pt, 17pt and 20pt and the preset value is 11pt.2
option style
style
This controls the style to be loaded for the presentation. By default, the default
style will be loaded. For more styles, see section 7.
option fleqn
fleqn
This option makes equations flushed left. It does the same as the equally named
option for the article class.
option leqno
leqno
Put equation numbers at the left. Also the same as in the article class.
option nopsheader
nopsheader
By default, powerdot will write a postscript command to the ps file to make sure
that post processors like ps2pdf know which paper to use without the need to
specify it on the command line. See also section 8. If you experience problems
with post processing or printing or you want to specify the paper size in the post
processing steps yourself, use this option.
4
option hlentries
hlentries
This highlights table of contents entries when the entry matches with the
current slide and its preset value is true. See also section 5. If you don’t
want highlighting of table of contents entries (for instance in print mode), use
hlentries=false.
option hlsections
hlsections
This highlights table of contents sections when the section matches with the cur-
rent section in the presentation and is preset to false. See also section 5. Spec-
ifying this option turns highlighting of sections on. This could be useful when
you are using a style that implements a split table of contents.
option pauseslide
pauseslide
This option inserts a black slide in the presentation on page 1 and will auto-
matically advance to page 2 when opening the presentation in a PDF viewer like
Acrobat (Reader). The option also inserts a link behind every slide or section title
that brings you to the black slide when clicked. When you click anywhere in the
black slide, you will go back to the originating slide. This option can be used to
temporarily pause a presentation, for instance, to do a proof on the black board.
Optionally, a color can be supplied, for instance, pauseslide=white to have a
pause on a white screen.
options clock
clock
This displays a small digital clock on slides which you can use to check the time
left for your presentation.
This example sets up a presentation in tycja style, with a black slide, normal size 12
points and flushed left equations.
\documentclass[
size=12pt,
paper=letterpaper,
mode=handout,
display=slidesnotes,
style=tycja,
nohandoutpagebreaks,
pauseslide,
fleqn
]{powerdot}
Changing the paper and mode options, now produces a handout with possibly more
than two slides per page due to the nohandoutpagebreaks option.
2 Note that sizes other than 10pt, 11pt and 12pt are non-standard and it is assumed that you have the
extsizes bundle [11] installed, which provides these sizes.
5
2.2 Setup options
\pdsetup There are several extra options that can help customizing your presentation. These
options are not available via the \documentclass command. This has a technical
reason.3 We distinguish two types of options. Options that can only be set globally
(acting for the entire presentation) using the \pdsetup command and options that
can be accessed both globally (via \pdsetup) and locally (via slide environments, see
section 3).
This section describes options that can only be used globally in the preamble of your
presentation via the \pdsetup command.
option palette
palette
This specifies the palette to be used. A palette is a set of colors defined by a style.
To find out which palettes are defined by each style, see section 7.
option theslide
theslide
This option controls how the slide number appears on the slide. This is preset
to the value \arabic{slide}~/~\pageref*{lastslide}, which could appear
like 5/22. Notice that the \arabic{slide} typesets the number of the current
slide and that \pageref*{lastslide} typesets the number of the last slide.4
option thenote
thenote
This is similar to the theslide option, but typesets the slide numbers of
notes. The preset value is note~\arabic{note}~of~slide~\arabic{slide}
and \arabic{note} here typesets the number of the current note that goes with
the current slide. This could appear like note 2 of slide 7.
option counters
counters
The counters option lists counters that you might want to protect on over-
lays. As material on overlays (see section 4) is processed multiple times, also
LATEX counters, like the equation counter, might be increased too often. To
avoid that your equations get different numbers on every overlay, use this op-
tion. The equation, table, figure, footnote and mpfootnote counters are
already protected for you. If you use extra counters, for instance for theorems,
list them in this option. Example:
counters={theorem,lemma}
option list
list
This option takes a list of options that will be passed on to the enumitem package
that controls the layout of lists created by the enumerate and itemize environ-
ments. Example:
list={labelsep=1em,leftmargin=*,itemsep=0pt,topsep=5pt,parsep=0pt}
See for more information on controlling the layout of lists the enumitem package
[4].
6
As the list option, but only control enumerate and itemize environments re-
spectively.
option clockformat
clockformat
This option specifies the format of the clock. The format is set using Acrobat’s
util.printd function.5 The default value is HH:MM:ss, which shows a 00-23
hour, 00-59 minute, 00-59 second clock. Example:
clockformat=h:MM tt
The above setting will display a 1-12 hour, 00-59 minute, am/pm clock. That is,
the clock might show 5:53 pm.
option clockrefresh
clockrefresh
This option should be a number which specifies how often the clock is refreshed
in milliseconds. The default behavior is to refresh the clock every second. Thus,
the default value is 1000. Notice, if the clockformat is such that seconds are not
shown, then it makes no sense to update that clock every second. A correspond-
ing example:
clockrefresh=60000
The interpretation of this is that the clock will be updated every minute.
This section describes options that can be used both globally via \pdsetup and locally
via slide environments (see section 3).
options lf cf rf
lf
This determines the content of the left, center and right footers. These are preset
cf
to empty.
rf
option trans
trans
This option sets the default transition effect to be used in the presentation. These
transition effects only work after compiling the presentation to PDF format. See
also section 8. The following transition effects are supported: Split, Blinds,
Box, Wipe, Dissolve, Glitter and Replace. When you are using a viewer that
understands PDF 1.5, you can also use Fly, Push, Cover, Uncover or Fade. It
is important to notice that most viewers are case sensitive, so, for instance, box
will not work.
The preset effect is Replace which just replaces one slide with another when
browsing the slides. Note that some PDF viewers (like Acrobat Reader 5 and
higher) only produce the transition effect in full screen mode. If you want to
use a custom transition effect that is not listed in the list above (for instance, a
wipe effect with a custom wipe direction), then that is possible. However, power-
dot will put a warning in your log file that the effect that you have chosen, might
not work in the PDF viewer. Here is an example that does work.
trans=Wipe /Di 0
In Acrobat (Reader), this wipes from left to right instead of the default top to
bottom. For more information, see a PDF Reference Manual.
7
option method
method
This option can be used when a slide contains special material that does not
get treated in the ‘usual’ way by LATEX. Verbatim material is an example of this.
Possible values are normal (the preset value), direct and file. We will come
back to this option in detail in section 6.4.
8
\pdsetup{
dminwidth=.1\slidewidth,dmaxwidth=.9\slidewidth,
dminheight=.2\slideheight,dmaxheight=.8\slideheight
}
option dbright
dbright
This option can be used to adjust the brightness of the dots. The number should
be an integer between -100 and 100. If the number is negative, the color will
be adjusted towards black, with -100 giving black. If the number is positive, the
color will be adjusted towards white, with 100 giving white. With a light back-
ground, you may want to choose bright to be positive. With a dark background,
you may want to set it negative. The preset value is 60, meaning a mixture of 40%
of the original color and 60% white.
option dprop
dprop
This option is used for passing extra parameters to the \psdot command, which
creates the random dots. You could, for instance, change the style of the dots or
the line width. See for more information about \psdot the pstricks documenta-
tion [16, 17]. powerdot defines two extra dot styles that can be used for the ran-
dom dots. These styles are ocircle (open circle) and osquare (open square).
This turns on random dots and doesn’t use the left 20% of the slide for placing random
dots.
\pdsetup{
randomdots,dprop={dotstyle=ocircle,linewidth=.5pt},
dminsize=500pt,dmaxsize=600pt,dmindots=2,dmaxdots=5
}
This example puts at most 5 big circles on slides. These circles do not fit on the slides
and you will only see parts of them in the shape of curves.
Here is an example of a \pdsetup command that one could use to set up the presen-
tation.
\pdsetup{
lf=My first presentation,
rf=For some conference,
trans=Wipe,
theslide=\arabic{slide},
randomdots,dmaxdots=80
}
This sets the left and right footers and will initialize the transition effect to Wipe. Fur-
ther, slide numbers will not include the number of the last slide, but only the number
of the current slide. Finally, slides will be covered with at most 80 random dots.
A small note is necessary with respect to the appearance of footers. The slide num-
ber (controlled by the theslide option) will be added to a footer. Most styles add it
too the right footer. If both the footer and the slide number are non empty, ~--~ will be
inserted in between them to separate them. Styles might modify this default behavior
however.
9
3 Making slides
3.1 The title slide
\title The title slide is created by the \maketitle command.
\author
\maketitle[〈options〉]
\and
\date
Its use is the same as in the standard LATEX document classes. The optional argument
\maketitle
〈options〉 can contain any option from section 2.2.2. Specifying such an option in the
\maketitle command will only have an effect on the title slide and not on other slides.
See an example below.
\documentclass{powerdot}
\title{Title}
\author{You \and me}
\date{August 21, 2005}
\begin{document}
\maketitle
...
\end{document}
The author, title and date declarations provide the text to be used when making a
title page. The design of the title page is specific to the style in use. Notice the use of
\and for separating multiple authors. See a LATEX manual [12] for more information on
commands such as \title and \author.
\begin{slide}[〈options〉]{〈slide title〉}
〈body〉
\end{slide}
In section 4 we’ll see how to give some life to the slides, but for now, let’s look at a
simple example.
\begin{slide}{First slide}
Hello World.
\end{slide}
The slide environment has one required argument, namely the slide title. When a slide
is created, the slide title is used to create an entry in the table of contents and in the
list of bookmarks. The table of contents is a listing of the slides and section titles in the
presentation that appears on each slide.
The table of contents is clickable (when the presentation is compiled into PDF)
and serves as a nice way to jump from location to location within the presentation.
The bookmark list is only present when compilation is taken all the way to the PDF file
format. It also serves as a table of contents, but this list does not appear on any of the
slides, but in a separate window in a PDF viewer. In the example above, the entries in
both table contents and the list of bookmarks would be titled First slide.
The 〈options〉 for the slide environment can contain any option listed in sec-
tion 2.2.2. Additionally, the following options can be used.
option toc
toc
When specified, the value is used for the entry in the table of contents; otherwise,
the slide title is used. If toc= is specified, then no entry is created.
10
option bm
bm
When specified, the value is used for the bookmark entry; otherwise, the slide
title is used. If bm= is specified, then no entry is created.
These optional arguments are especially useful when the title of a slide is extremely
long or when the title contains LATEX commands that do not render correctly in the
bookmarks.6 When specifying entries, be sure to hide special characters ‘,’ and ‘=’
between curly brackets ‘{’ and ‘}’. Let’s look at an example that uses these optional
arguments.
\begin{slide}[toc=,bm={LaTeX, i*i=-1}]{\color{red}\LaTeX, $i^2=-1$}
My slide contents.
\end{slide}
In this example, the slide title will appear as LATEX, i 2 = −1. This text will not render
correctly in a bookmark entry. An attempt is made to correct this, but often, the correc-
tion does not produce an equivalent text. This particular title would be rendered in the
bookmark list as redLaTeX, i2=-1. On the other hand, the manually specified book-
mark entry is rendered as: LaTeX, i*i=-1. Notice, no entry is created in the table of
contents, because of the use of toc=.
In addition to the slide environment, each individual style can define its own en-
vironments. Many styles have a wideslide environment. The idea is that one might
have information that does not fit nicely on a slide with a table of contents listed, as
this consumes some space. In such cases, it is preferable to use a slide that does not list
the table of contents. The wideslide environment provides this functionality and has
more space for the actual slide content. See section 7 for information on the various
environments provided by the styles.
4 Overlays
It is often the case that you don’t want all the information on the slide to appear at
once. Rather, the information should appear one item at a time. In powerdot, this is
achieved with overlays. Each slide can be comprised of many overlays, and the overlays
are displayed one at a time.
\pause[〈number〉]
The slide’s information is displayed and continues until the \pause command is en-
countered. No further output within the same slide is displayed until the click of the
mouse or the touch of the keyboard. Then, the content will continue to display until
all the information is displayed or until another \pause command is encountered. In
this example, power is displayed on the first overlay, and powerdot is the displayed
on the second overlay. The \pause command is often used within the itemize and
enumerate environments. For example,
6 The bookmarking procedure uses \pdfstringdef from the hyperref package, and it can process ac-
cented characters such as \"i.
11
\begin{slide}{Multiple pauses}
power\pause dot \pause
\begin{itemize}
\item Let me pause\ldots \pause
\item \ldots while I talk \pause and chew bubble gum. \pause
\item Perhaps you’ll be persuaded.
\item Perhaps not.
\end{itemize}
\end{slide}
Since \pause was used before the itemize environment, no item will appear until
the third overlay. Then, each item will be displayed one at a time, each on their own
overlay. More information on using lists will follow in the next section.
The optional argument of the \pause command specifies the number of overlays
to pause. An example usage is:
\begin{slide}{Pause longer}
\begin{itemize}
\item A \pause
\item B \pause[2]
\item C
\end{itemize}
\end{slide}
In the example above, item C will appear on the fourth overlay. The usefulness of this
option will become more apparent in the next section; so we will revisit a similar ex-
ample at that time.
The display is simple, each item appears one at a time with each overlay.
option Suppose we wanted every item to show, but we only wanted one item to appear
type ‘active’ at once. This can be accomplished via the type option for the itemize envi-
ronment. The preset value is 0.
\begin{slide}{Type 1 itemize}
\begin{itemize}[type=1]
\item A \pause
\item B \pause
\item C
\end{itemize}
\end{slide}
Now, every item will be displayed in the inactive color (which is defined by the style
that you use), and the item’s font color will become the active one on the overlay that it
would normally appear on. The default behavior is given by type=0. It is still possible
to pass optional arguments to enumitem via the second optional argument:
12
\begin{slide}{Type 1 itemize}
\begin{enumerate}[type=1][label=\roman*a)]
\item A \pause
\item B \pause
\item C
\end{enumerate}
\end{slide}
Take care, that this must always be the second optional argument! It is possible to leave
the first one empty, which is valid only for powerdot.
Lists can also be nested to create complicated structures. When a list is nested, it
inherits the setting of the type option from the ‘parent’ list, but that can be overruled
by specifying the type option in the optional argument of the nested list. We present
here one example, but many more can be created by nesting lists of different types in
different ways.
\begin{slide}{Nested lists}
\begin{itemize}
\item A\pause
\begin{itemize}[type=1]
\item B\pause
\end{itemize}
\item C
\end{itemize}
\end{slide}
This displays A and B on the first overlay, but B is inactive. On overlay 2, B will become
active and on overlay 3, C will become visible.
\item[〈label〉]<〈overlays〉>
This optional argument should contain an overlay specification stating on which over-
lays you want the item to appear. This specification is a comma separated list where
each item can used the notation as in table 1. The 〈label〉 argument is the standard
Syntax Meaning
x Only overlay x
-x All overlays up to and including x
x- All overlays from x, including x
x-y All overlays from x to y, including x and y
optional argument for \item in LATEX. A LATEX manual [12] can tell you more about this
argument.
Here is an example.
\begin{slide}{Active itemize}
\begin{itemize}[type=1]
\item<1> A
\item<2> B
\item<3> C
\end{itemize}
\end{slide}
13
Here we have said that A should only be active on overlay 1, B should only be active on
overlay 2, and C should only be active on overlay 3. Again, when the item is not active,
it appears in the inactive color because of type=1.
If type=0 is specified and if each item is given an overlay option, then each item will
appear only when it is active. When the item is not active, then it will not show on the
slide at all. More examples demonstrating the syntax for 〈overlays〉 will be discussed in
the next section.
\onslide{〈overlays〉}{〈text〉}
This command takes an 〈overlays〉 specification as first argument and the 〈text〉 to ap-
ply it to as second argument. The 〈overlays〉 on which the text will appear are specified
as a comma separated list with syntax as in table 1. We start off with a simple example.
\begin{slide}{Simple onslide}
\onslide{1,2}{power}\onslide{2}{dot}
\end{slide}
We have instructed power to appear on overlays one and two, and dot to appear only
on overlay two. As you might guess, this example has the same output as our first
\pause example. Yet, it is clearly the case that our syntax is more complicated. How-
ever, this slight “complication” also allows for much more flexibility.
\onslide+ Consider the above example with the following modifications:
\begin{slide}{Simple onslide+}
\texttt{onslide }: \onslide{1}{power}\onslide{2}{dot}\\
\texttt{onslide+}: \onslide+{1}{power}\onslide+{2}{dot}
\end{slide}
The \onslide+ command displays its content in a different manner altogether. Now,
dot appears on every overlay, but it is in inactive color and matches the normal font
color only on overlay two. This is comparable to the type=1 behavior for lists (see
section 4.2).
When executing this example, we will also notice that the \onslide command
does hide material, but still reserves the right amount of space for it: on overlay 2,
the dots appear right above each other. The next command does not reserve space.
\onslide* Instead of hiding and reserving space (\onslide) or putting 〈text〉 in the inactive
color (\onslide+) when the overlay doesn’t match 〈overlays〉, this command just eats
the material altogether. To understand the differences, consider the following exam-
ple:
\begin{slide}{Simple onslide*}
\texttt{onslide }: \onslide{1}{power}\onslide{2}{dot}\\
\texttt{onslide+}: \onslide+{1}{power}\onslide+{2}{dot}\\
\texttt{onslide*}: \onslide*{1}{power}\onslide*{2}{dot}
\end{slide}
The output of the first two lines, we are already familiar with. The third line displays
power on overlay 1 and dot on overlay 2, but no space for power is reserved on overlay
2. Hence dot will start on the cursor position that power started on overlay 1 and it is
not aligned below the other two dots.
We finish with an example of the syntax that is possible with \item and \onslide.
Remember that these commands take a comma separated list for the 〈overlays〉 speci-
fication and that each element can used the syntax as explained in table 1. The various
variations are demonstrated in the example below.
14
\begin{slide}{Lists}
\onslide{10}{on overlay 10 only}\par
\onslide{-5}{on every overlay before and including overlay 5}\par
\onslide{5-}{on every overlay after and including overlay 5}\par
\onslide{2-5}{on overlays 2 through 5, inclusive}\par
\onslide{-3,5-7,9-}{on every overlay except overlays 4 and 8}
\end{slide}
As you can see, we still use \onslide. The only change is with the syntax of the
list of overlays. Now, we can specify a ‘+’ symbol in the list. In its simplest usage,
\onslide{+1} will make text display one overlay after the overlay it would normally
appear on. You can still use the syntax in table 1. These are demonstrated in the above
example. Notice, \onslide{+1-6} means that the text will appear one overlay after
the overlay it would normally appear on and that the text should remain shown until
overlay seven. To make text appear for a range of relative overlays, see the final demon-
stration in the above example.
5 Presentation structure
5.1 Making sections
\section This section describes the \section command which provides a way to structure a
presentation.
\section[〈options〉]{〈section title〉}
This command will produce a slide with 〈section title〉 on it and will also use this text
to create sections in the table of contents and in the bookmarks list. There are several
〈options〉 to control its output.
option This option controls the creation of a section in the table of contents. The preset
tocsection value is true.
15
tocsection=true
This does create a section in the table of contents. This means that all following
slides, until the next section, will be nested under this section.
tocsection=false
This does not create a section in the table of contents and hence the section will
be listed as an ordinary slide.
tocsection=hidden
This does create a section in the table of contents, but this is only visible when
you view a slide that is part of this section. This could be used to append a sec-
tion to the presentation which you can discuss if there is some extra time.
option This option controls whether the \section command creates a slide. The preset
slide value is true.
slide=true
A slide is created.
slide=false
type=0
When material is not of the requested type as specified in the content option, it
will be hidden.
type=1
As type=0, but instead of hiding material, it will be typeset in the inactive color.
option The content option controls which elements will be included in the overview. The
content preset value is all. The description below assumes that type=0 was chosen, but the
alternative text for type=1 can easily be deduced.
16
content=all
This will display a full overview of your presentation including all sections and
slides, except the slides in hidden sections (see section 5.1).
content=sections
content=currentsection
This displays the current section only.
content=future
content=futuresections
We finish this section with a small example that will demonstrate how you can
make a presentation that contains an overall overview of sections in the presentation,
giving a general idea of the content, and per section a detailed overview of the slides in
that section.
\begin{slide}[toc=,bm=]{Overview}
\tableofcontents[content=sections]
\end{slide}
\section{First section}
\begin{slide}[toc=,bm=]{Overview of the first section}
\tableofcontents[content=currentsection,type=1]
\end{slide}
\begin{slide}{Some slide}
\end{slide}
\section{Second section}
...
6 Miscellaneous
6.1 Notes
note The note environment can be used to make personal notes that accompany a slide.
You can control displaying notes using the display option (see section 2.1). Here is
an example.
\begin{slide}{Chewing gum}
...
\end{slide}
\begin{note}{Reminder for chewing gum}
Don’t forget to mention that chewing gum is sticky.
\end{note}
17
\includegraphics[height=0.8\slideheight]{me_chewing_gum.eps}
\vspace{\stretch{1}}
\end{emptyslide}
\begin{slide}{Slide} \begin{slide}{Slide}
\cite{someone} \cite{someone}
\end{slide} \end{slide}
\begin{slide}{References} \begin{slide}{References}
\begin{thebibliography}{1} \bibliographystyle{plain}
\bibitem{someone} Article of someone. \bibliography{YourBib}
\end{thebibliography} \end{slide}
\end{slide}
In case you have a big reference list that you want to spread over multiple slides,
have a look at the packages natbib and bibentry [8]. Using both packages allows you to
do:
\begin{slide}{References (1)}
\bibliographystyle{plain}
\nobibliography{YourBib}
\bibentry{someone1}
\bibentry{someone2}
\end{slide}
\begin{slide}{References (2)}
\bibentry{someone3}
\end{slide}
Have a look at your favorite LATEX manual for more information about citations and
bibliographies.
method=normal
This is the preset method for processing slides. It is fast and allows for overlays,
but it does not allow for verbatim.8
method=direct
This method is also fast, but does not allow for overlays. Overlays will silently be
disabled. However, it does allow for verbatim content on slides.
7 And other content that needs catcode changes when processing.
8 Except when it has been saved in a box outside the slide.
18
method=file
This method uses a temporary file to export the slide body to and read it back
in. This method does allow for verbatim content and overlays, but could be slow
when many slides use this method because the filesystem is used.
Below is an example demonstrating the use of all three different methods of slide
processing.
\documentclass{powerdot}
\usepackage{listings}
\lstnewenvironment{code}{%
\lstset{frame=single,escapeinside=‘’,
backgroundcolor=\color{yellow!20},
basicstyle=\footnotesize\ttfamily}
}{}
\begin{document}
\begin{slide}{Slide 1}
Normal \pause content.
\end{slide}
\begin{slide}[method=direct]{Slide 2}
Steps 1 and 2:
\begin{code}
compute a;‘\pause’
compute b;
\end{code}
\end{slide}
\begin{slide}[method=file]{Slide 3}
Steps 1 and 2:
\begin{code}
compute a;‘\pause’
compute b;
\end{code}
\end{slide}
\end{document}
The first slide shows the default behavior for normal content. It produces two overlays.
The second slide does not produce overlays, despite the use of the \pause command.
This command has been disabled by choosing the direct method to process the ver-
batim content. The third slide has the same body as the second slide, but now does
create two overlays, because the method using a temporary file has been chosen. No-
tice that we used \pause inside the listing, but that it can also be used outside the
listing.
\twocolumn[〈options〉]{〈left〉}{〈right〉}
This typesets 〈left〉 and 〈right〉 in two columns. The dimensions of those columns can
be controlled by 〈options〉. Below are the available options.
option lineheight
lineheight
If lineheight is specified, a line of the specified height will be created using
\psline in between the two columns. Example: lineheight=6cm.
option lineprop
lineprop
Any pstricks declaration to specify the line properties. Example:
lineprop={linestyle=dotted,linewidth=3pt}
19
options lfrheight lfrprop
lfrheight
The first creates a frame of the specified height around the left column. The
lfrprop
second is as lineprop, but for the left frame.
option colsep
colsep
Space between the two columns. Preset: 0.06\linewidth.
option topsep
topsep
The extra space (additional to \baselineskip) between text above the columns
and the text within the columns. Preset: 0cm.
option bottomsep
bottomsep
Idem for the bottom of the columns. Preset: 0cm.
option indent
indent
Horizontal indent left to the left column. Preset: 0cm.
Note that the use of the xkeyval commands \savevalue and \usevalue could be
handy here, for instance for copying the properties of the left frame to the right frame.
20
Top
9
6
5 5
Left column text Right column text
3
1 2
5 5 5
Bottom
Meaning of the labels
1 lcolwidth 5 frsep
2 rcolwidth 6 topsep
3 colsep 7 indent
4 lfrheight, rfrheight, 8 bottomsep
lineheight 9 Reference point
This avoids typing them twice and avoids making errors resulting in different frames.
See an example below.
\twocolumn[
\savevalue{lfrheight}=3cm,
\savevalue{lfrprop}={
linestyle=dotted,framearc=.2,linewidth=3pt},
rfrheight=\usevalue{lfrheight},
rfrprop=\usevalue{lfrprop}
]{left}{right}
See the xkeyval documentation [2] for more information about \savevalue and
\usevalue.
7 Available styles
powerdot comes with a number of styles which are listed in the overview below. The
characteristics of each style are described shortly and a sample of a title slide and a
normal slide is provided for each style. Styles support the wideslide environment,
have a table of contents on the left part of the paper in landscape orientation and on
the bottom part in portrait orientation and support portrait orientation unless states
otherwise.
21
default
This style provides six different palettes. A flower in the top left corner decorates
the slides for all palettes. The default palette is blue which has as main colors
light blue and white. You can see an example of that palette below. Other avail-
able palettes are red, green, yellow, brown and purple.
Example slide
simple
This is a simple style in black and white. This style could be useful if you want to
print your slides.
Example slide
tycja
This style is set in shades of yellow and dark blue. The table of contents on slides
is on the right side of the paper in landscape orientation and on the bottom part
in portrait.
Example slide
ikeda
This style uses dark shades of red and blue and a light text color. It has nice
patterns on the slide for decoration.
Example slide
22
fyma
This style was originally created by Laurent Jacques for prosper. Based on that
style, he created a version for HA-prosper with extended features. With his kind
permission, this style has been converted by Shun’ichi J. Amano for powerdot.
The style has an elegant design with a light blue and white gradient background
in the default blue palette. Other available palettes are green, gray, brown and
orange. It has special templates for sections on slides and sections on wide
slides. Below is a sample of the blue palette.
Example slide
ciment
This style was originally created by Mathieu Goutelle for prosper and HA-prosper.
With his kind permission, this style has been converted for powerdot. The style
has a background that is hatched with light gray horizontal lines. Titles and table
of contents highlighting are done with dark red.
Example slide
elcolors
This is a style using light shades of the elementary colors red, blue and yellow.
Example slide
aggie
This style was created by Jack Stalnaker for HA-prosper and he has converted this
style for powerdot. The style uses dark red and light brown colors.
23
Example slide
husky
This style is created by Jack Stalnaker and has a background of light gray sun
beams combined with dark red highlights.
Example slide
Hendri Adriaens Christopher Ellison We will prove formula (1) on the blackboard.
● Here
March 25, 2021
✦ is
■ a
◆ list
■ with
✦ seven
● items.
sailor
This style is contributed by Mael Hilléreau and supplies five different palettes:
Sea (the default), River, Wine, Chocolate and Cocktail. Below is a sample of
the palette Sea.
Example slide
Here
is
Hendri Adriaens Christopher Ellison
a
March 25, 2021 list
with
seven
items.
upen
This style has a nice dark blue background and text in yellow. It is contributed by
Piskala Upendran.
Example slide
bframe
The bframe style has blue frames on the slide in which text is positioned. The
style is contributed by Piskala Upendran.
24
Example slide
horatio
The horatio style has been contributed by Michael Lundholm and is a more con-
servative blue style.
Example slide
paintings
This is a simple style without a table of contents on slides. It has been con-
tributed by Thomas Koepsell and provides 10 different palettes. The colors used
in the palettes are drawn from famous paintings.9 If you are interested, open
the style file to read which paintings have been used. The available palettes are:
Syndics (the default), Skater, GoldenGate, Lamentation, HolyWood, Europa,
Moitessier, MayThird, PearlEarring and Charon (all case sensitive). Below
is a sample of the Syndics palette.
Example slide
Example of the paintings style We will prove formula (1) on the blackboard.
• Here
Hendri Adriaens Christopher Ellison • is
• a
March 25, 2021 • list
• with
• seven
• items.
klope
The klope style implements a horizontal table of contents that only lists the sec-
tions. The style is available in the following palettes: Spring, PastelFlower,
BlueWater and BlackWhite. The Spring palette is the default and you can see
a sample of that below.
9 The style defines a color pdcolor7 which is not used in the style but comes from the same painting and
complements the other colors. It can be used, for example, to highlight text against the main background
color.
25
Example slide
jefka
The jefka style comes with four palettes: brown (the default), seagreen, blue
and white. Below you see a sample of the brown palette.
Example slide
Here is the binomium formula.
n
!
X n n−k k
(a + b)n = a b (1)
Example of the jefka style k=0
k
right footer – 2 / 2
pazik
This style is available in two palettes: red and brown. Below is a sample of the
default red palette.
Example slide
Here is the binomium formula.
n
X n
(a + b)n = an−k bk (1)
Example of the pazik style k=0
k
26
Package/file Version Date Required/tested
xkeyval [2] 2.5c 2005/07/10 required
pstricks.sty [16, 17] 0.60 2013/12/12 required
xcolor [10] 1.11 2004/05/09 required
enumitem [4] 3.5.2 2011/09/28 required
article class 1.4f 2004/02/16 tested
geometry [15] 3.2 2002/07/08 tested
hyperref [14] 6.74m 2003/11/30 tested
graphicx [5] 1.1a 2017/06/01 required
verbatim 1.5q 2003/08/22 tested
Table 2: Dependencies
not support all PostScript specials and hence these will display the presentation incor-
rectly. If your DVI viewer does support this, make sure that your DVI display settings
match that of the presentation. In case you are using the screen paper, you should set
the DVI display setting to using the letter paper format. If your DVI viewer allows for
custom paper formats, use 8.25 inch by 11 inch.
Note that certain things that are produced with PostScript or PDF techniques will
not work in a DVI viewer. Examples are hiding of material via postscript layers (as is
done, for instance, by \pause, see section 4) and hyperlinks, for instance in the table
of contents.
If you want to produce a postscript document, run dvips over the DVI without any
particular command line options related to orientation or paper size. powerdot will
write information to the DVI file that helps dvips and ps2pdf (ghostscript) to create a
proper document. If you have some reason that this does not work for you and you
want to specify the paper and orientation yourself, you should use the nopsheader
option that is described in section 2. The PostScript document could, for instance, be
used to put multiple slides on a page using the psnup utility.
To create a PDF document for your presentation, run ps2pdf over the PS file created
with dvips. Also here, you can leave out any command line arguments related to paper
size or orientation. If this is problematic for you somehow, use the nopsheader option
as before and specify the paper and orientation at each intermediate step yourself.
27
\NeedsTeXFormat{LaTeX2e}[1995/12/01]
\ProvidesPackage{powerdot-default}[2005/10/09 v1.2 default style (HA)]
\RequirePackage{pifont}
See for more information about these commands a LATEX manual, for instance
[12].
Template definitions
We will come back to this in sections 9.3 to 9.9.
Custom declarations
These can include anything that you want to be part of the style. The default
style, for instance, includes definitions for the labels in list environments like
itemize and some initializations for lists in general (done with \pdsetup, see
section 2.2). This part could also include some customizations as described in
section 9.10.
Font initializations
This initializes font definitions (which can be done by loading a package like
helvet).
\pddefinepalettes{〈name1〉}{〈cmds1〉}. . .
This macro takes any even number of mandatory arguments with a minimum of two.
For every 〈name〉, a set of 〈commands〉 can be given which define the palette with
name 〈name〉. These commands can define colors with names pdcolor1, pdcolor2,
etcetera. These colors can be used when designing the template (see section 9.3).
pdcolor1 will always be used as text color.
The user can access these palettes via the palette key for the \pdsetup command
(see section 2.2). If the user does not specify a palette, the first palette defined when
compiling the presentation, will be used. Here is an example for defining 2 palettes.
\pddefinepalettes{reds}{
\definecolor{pdcolor1}{rgb}{1,0,0}
\definecolor{pdcolor2}{rgb}{1,.1,0}
\definecolor{pdcolor3}{rgb}{1,.2,0}
}{greens}{
\definecolor{pdcolor1}{rgb}{0,1,0}
\definecolor{pdcolor2}{rgb}{.1,1,0}
\definecolor{pdcolor3}{rgb}{.2,1,0}
}
In this example, the reds palette is the default one. For more information about
\definecolor, see the documentation of the xcolor package [10].
Notice that it is not necessary to use the names pdcolor2, pdcolor3 etcetera as
color names. But if these colors are defined, powerdot will use them, for instance, in
28
the random dots feature (see section 2.2.2). The flexibility adds extra possibilities in
setting up templates and palettes. See for an example of its use, the klope style.
\pddefinetemplate[〈basis〉]{〈name〉}{〈options〉}{〈commands〉}
\pddefinetemplate This defines the environment 〈name〉 to produce a slide with characteristics deter-
mined by 〈basis〉, 〈options〉 and 〈commands〉. We will discuss these elements in more
detail in the coming sections.
If you want to create several templates that differ only slightly from each other,
define a 〈basis〉 template, and then use it to define other templates. All 〈options〉
and 〈commands〉 for the new template 〈name〉 will be appended to the existing list
of 〈options〉 and 〈commands〉 from the 〈basis〉 template.
Make sure you choose a proper name for the template, and avoid redefining exist-
ing templates or environments. powerdot defines pauseslide, note and emptyslide
internally, so you shouldn’t use these names unless you know what you’re doing. Fur-
thermore, each style needs to define at least the templates slide and titleslide.
The titleslide environment will be used to create the title slide and slide will (by
default) also be used to create section slides. Titles and sections are a bit special in the
way they use the 〈options〉 and will be discussed in more detail in section 9.10.
Assuming there was no ifsetup declaration before the first textpos declaration, this
first textpos will apply to every possible setup. However, for the screen format in
portrait orientation, the next textpos declaration will be used. In fact, all declarations
that appear until we switch to the next ifsetup (which specifies all paper sorts and
only landscape orientation) will be used in the portrait screen layout. All keys after
the next ifsetup declaration will be used in landscape orientation, with any paper,
mode and display. If, after declaring some specializations, you want to switch back
to settings that apply to all possible setups, set ifsetup to empty as is done in the
example. All subsequent declarations will then again be applied under any setup.
29
The following command is a stand-alone implementation of the mechanism de-
scribed above. It allows you to control the setup outside the 〈options〉 argument of the
\pddefinetemplate command.
\pdifsetup{〈desired〉}{〈true〉}{〈false〉}
\pdifsetup This macro executes 〈true〉 when the setup that the user chose matches with the
〈desired〉 setup, 〈false〉 in all other cases. For instance, if the user has chosen landscape,
then
\pdifsetup{landscape}{yes}{no}
will typeset yes. If the user would have chosen portrait instead, then no would have
been typeset.
This macro can be used to check setup requests from the user and, for instance,
generate an error if a certain setup is not supported by your style. powerdot provides
one predefined error message which can be used in one of the first lines of your style.
\pd@noportrait
\pd@noportrait This macro generates an error when the user requests portrait orientation. Notice that
the handout mode only works in portrait orientation. This macro takes that into ac-
count and doesn’t generate an error in the case that the user requested a handout.
option text-
text-
The main text box on the slide.
option toc-
toc-
The (full) table of contents on a slide containing sections and slides.
option stoc-
stoc-
This is a table of contents containing only the sections. See also ntoc below.
option ntoc-
ntoc-
This is a table of contents containing only the entries for the active section. To-
gether with stoc, this can be used to create a split table of contents. In a partic-
ular template, one would usually have a toc, a combination of stoc and ntoc or
no table of contents at all.
option -hook
-hook
This option defines the \rput hook that will be used when positioning the item.
This can be tl, t, tr, r, Br, br, b, bl, Bl, l, B and c. See the pstricks documenta-
tion for more information.
option -pos
-pos
This defines the position of the hook on the paper. The lower left corner of
the paper is given by the point {0,0} and the upper right corner by the point
{\slidewidth,\slideheight}. So if you want to position the main text box at
20% from the left edge and 30% from the top edge of the paper, you have to do
the following.
textpos={.2\slidewidth,.7\slideheight}
If the position of any component has not been specified, this component will not
be placed on the slide. This gives an opportunity to design slides without footers
or table of contents, for instance.
option -width
-width
The width of the component. All component positioned by powerdot will be put
in a surrounding minipage environment. The width property determines the
width of the minipage. Example:
textwidth=.7\slidewidth
This property does not exist for the lf, cf and rf components.
option -height
-height
This option is only available for the text component. In other words, for this
property, there is only one key, namely textheight. This can be used to specify
the height of the minipage used for the main text. This does not imply that users
are restricted to this length or that powerdot does automatic slide breaking. This
height is only used for vertical alignments of material, for instance by footnotes.
The preset value is \slideheight.
option -font
-font
This will be inserted just before the text that is about to be typeset. This can
be used to declare deviations from the main text font and color. It can be a
font declaration, like \large\bfseries, but can also contain other things like
\color{red} or \raggedright.
option -temp
-temp
This property is only available for the footers (lf, cf and rf) and can be used
to change the template of the footers. This means that you can, for instance,
add content to the footer, besides the content specified by the user. The default
declaration by powerdot is the following.
31
rftemp=\pd@@rf\ifx\pd@@rf\@empty
\else\ifx\theslide\@empty\else\ -- \fi\fi\theslide
Here \pd@@rf will contain the content of the right footer defined by the user
via the \pdsetup command. Similarly, \pd@@lf contains the content of the left
footer. The above declaration checks whether the footer and \theslide are both
non-empty and if so, it inserts -- to separate both.
option -orient
-orient
This property is only available for the toc, stoc and ntoc components. This
property can be h or v and determines the orientation of the table of contents.
The preset is v. See also section 9.6 for more information about the construction
of the table of contents.
which will prefix all normal entries (not the sections) with a bullet. By default, these
two macros are defined to just pass on their argument.
\pd@tocdisplay These two macros also take one argument. After processing an entry with the com-
\pd@tochighlight mand \pd@tocslide or \pd@tocsection, powerdot continues building the entry by
passing it through \pd@tocdisplay, when the entry needs to be displayed only, or
\pd@tochighlight, when the entry needs to be highlighted. These macros are a little
more involved and take care of putting the content in the proper font and color in a
minipage. Further, \pd@tochighlight also puts a box around the item.
Notice, that by default, both the separate table of contents entries as well as the
table of contents as a whole are typeset in minipage environments by these macros, in
case the table of contents is vertical. The -width properties then determines the width
of the table of contents and, together with tocsecindent and tocslideindent (see
below) the width of the individual entries. If it is horizontal, only the separate entries
will be in minipages and the table of contents itself not and the -width properties
determine only the width of the individual entries (together with tocsecindent and
tocslideindent).
Several aspects of the process of generating the table of contents can be controlled
via the keys that are available in the \pddefinetemplate command that will be de-
scribed below. If these keys do not provide enough handles to do what you want, you
might need to have a look at the two macros in the source and decide to rewrite them
in your style as to fit your needs. An example can be found in the fyma style.
option tocfrsep
tocfrsep
This length is the distance between the box around the content created by the
minipage and the highlight frame box created by \pd@tochighlight. Preset:
0.5mm.
option tocsecsep
tocsecsep
The distance inserted before a section (unless it is the first element in the table
32
of contents). Preset: 2ex. Notice that if the orientation of the table of contents is
set to vertical, this length creates a vertical skip, otherwise, it creates a horizontal
skip.
option tocslidesep
tocslidesep
The distance inserted before other entries (unless it is the first element in the
table of contents). Preset: 0ex. Like tocsecsep, the effect of this length depends
on the orientation of the table of contents.
option tocsecindent
tocsecindent
The horizontal space left to a section entry. Preset: 0pt.
option tocslideindent
tocslideindent
The horizontal space left to a slide entry. The horizontal skip will not be inserted
left to slide entries that appear before the first section. Preset: 0pt.
option tocsecm
tocsecm
This is inserted just before typesetting a section. This can be used to mark a
section, for instance with a line as in the default style. Preset: empty.
option toctcolor
toctcolor
This is the text color used for non-highlighted elements in the table of contents.
Preset: black.
option tochltcolor
tochltcolor
This is the text color used for highlighted elements in the table of contents. Pre-
set: white.
option tochlcolor
tochlcolor
This is the color used for the frame behind highlighted elements. Preset: black.
option iacolor
iacolor
The iacolor option can be used to specify the color that is used for inac-
tive things, produced for instance by \onslide, \pause (see section 4) and
\tableofcontents (see section 5.2). As xcolor is used by powerdot, one can
use special notation here, like
iacolor=black!20
The following options control the digital clock (see section 2.1). The clock is a form
text field with dynamic content, driven by a javascript via hyperref text fields. Some
options for the clock work similarly as for, for instance, the title component, but there
are also special options.
33
options clockwidth clockheight
clockwidth
These control the width and height of the text field containing the clock. Preset
clockheight
values come from hyperref and are 3cm and \baselineskip, respectively.
option clockcharsize
clockcharsize
The size of characters of the clock. Preset: 14pt.
option clockalign
clockalign
The alignment of the clock in the text field. 0 is left-aligned, 1 is centered and 2
is right aligned. Preset is 2.
option clockcolor
clockcolor
This determines the text color of the clock. The value should be a named color.
The preset value is black.
34
9.10 Title slide, titles and sections
As mentioned before, the style that you write needs to define at least the templates
slide and titleslide. The latter treats some of the keys in a special way. Besides, a
section slide is also done in a special way.
The title slide (made with \maketitle) puts the title with author(s) and date in
the main text box. This means that you have to supply a position for the main text
box (textpos). It will use the main text font for the text (together with declarations
in the textfont key) for the author(s) and the date. But it will use the declarations
in titlefont for the title of the presentation. This is done so that title and author(s)
form a coherent block and to make sure that long titles can push down the author(s)
instead of overwriting it.
\pd@slidetitle The \pd@slidetitle macro is used to typeset the slide title on slides. This macro
is comparable to for instance \pd@tocslide. The macro takes one argument which
is the slide title in the right font and formatting. By default, this macro just passes on
the content for typesetting, but you could redefine this macro so do something with its
input prior to typesetting it. An example is in the fyma style which underlines the title
after putting it in a minipage to support multi line titles.
\pd@title These macros are similar to \pd@slidetitle and typeset the title on the title slide
\pd@sectiontitle and the title on section slides respectively. By default, these also pass there argument
(which is the presentation title or section title), but these can be redefined to do some-
thing with the input prior to typesetting it, just as \pd@slidetitle.
options The \section command uses (by default) the slide environment and puts the
sectemp section title in the title box with font titlefont. If you want to change the default use
widesectemp of the slide environment for sections to, for instance, the sectionslide environ-
ment or any other especially designed section template, change the section template
preset in your style, using
\setkeys[pd]{section}{sectemp=sectionslide}
This means that if the user asks for template=slide in the \section command, the
sectionslide environment will be used silently. To avoid surprises, sectionslide
should preferably be based on the slide environment.
A similar option is available in case the user asks for template=wideslide. One
could for instance do the following.
\setkeys[pd]{section}{widesectemp=sectionwideslide}
Whenever the user requests a wideslide to be used for a \section, instead, the
sectionwideslide environment will be used. Other input to the template key by
the user does not get a special treatment.
Notice that these keys are available in the section family of keys and that you
cannot use them in the \pddefinetemplate command.
35
To start using LYX for powerdot presentations, copy the layout file powerdot.layout
to the LYX layout directory. You can find this file in the doc tree of your LATEX installa-
tion: texmf/doc/latex/powerdot. If you can’t find it there, download it from CTAN:
/macros/latex/contrib/powerdot. Once that is done, reconfigure LYX (Edit ⊲
Reconfigure and restart LYX afterwards). Now you can use the powerdot document
class as any other supported class. Go to Layout ⊲ Document and select powerdot
presentation as document class. For more information, see the LYX documentation,
which is accessible from the Help menu.
can be obtained using the following LYX environments. The right column represents
the text typed into the LYX window and the left column represents the environment
applied to this text).
Slide Slide title
Standard Slide content.
EndSlide
• You can use the environment menu (under the menu bar, top-left corner) to change
the environment applied to text.
• The slide title should be typed on the line of the Slide environment.
• EndSlide finishes the slide and its line is left blank.
In the LYX window, the Slide environment (that is, the slide title) is displayed in
magenta, the WideSlide style in green, the EmptySlide style in cyan and the Note
style in red and hence these are easily identifiable.
Here is another example.
\begin{slide}{First slide title}
The first slide.
\end{slide}
\begin{note}{First note title}
The first note, concerning slide 1.
\end{note}
\begin{slide}{Second slide title}
The second slide.
\end{slide}
36
Slide Second slide title
Standard The second slide.
EndSlide
This example demonstrates that it is often sufficient to insert the EndSlide style after
the last slide or note only. Only when you want certain material not to be part of a slide,
you need to finish the preceding slide manually using the EndSlide style. Example:
Slide First slide title
Standard The first slide.
EndSlide
[ERT box with some material]
Slide Second slide title
...
Note that you are not obliged to use a verbatim environment to type the \HelloWord
text into the LYX window because LYX directly supports standard verbatim.13 Conse-
quently, the use of the slide processing methods direct and file is not necessary
when you need standard verbatim, but it is necessary when doing more advanced
things, like in the example above.
37
Command Method in LYX
\title Use Title environment.
\author Use Author environment.
\date Use Date environment.
\maketitle Managed directly by LYX.
\section Use the Section environment. Options to this com-
mand (see section 5.1) can be specified using Insert ⊲
Short title in front of the section title.
\tableofcontents Use Insert ⊲ Lists & TOC ⊲ Table of contents.
You will need an ERT box if you want to use the optional
argument, see below.
pane and select corresponding paper size and orientation (you may choose letter
paper in the case you set paper=screen in the class options). Finally, go to the View
(or File ⊲ Export) menu and select your output (PostScript or PDF).
\pddefinelyxtemplate〈cs〉{〈template〉}
\pddefinelyxtemplate This will define the control sequence 〈cs〉 such that it will create a slide with template
〈template〉 (which has been defined using \pddefinetemplate. This new control se-
quence can be used in the layout file as follows.
# SunnySlide environment definition
Style SunnySlide
CopyStyle Slide
LatexName lyxend\lyxsunnyslide
Font
Color Yellow
EndFont
Preamble
\pddefinelyxtemplate\lyxsunnyslide{sunnyslide}
EndPreamble
End
Note that you must begin the LatexName field with lyxend. The definition of the LYX
template has been inserted in between Preamble and EndPreamble which assures
that the new LYX environment will work in every presentation. After modifying the
layout file, don’t forget to restart LYX. See for more information about creating LYX en-
vironments, the documentation of LYX in the Help menu.
38
Command Method in LYX
\and Within Author environment.
\pause
\item An ERT box is only required for the optional argument,
not mandatory for overlays specifications.
\onslide And the versions \onslide+ and \onslide*.
\twocolumn
\tableofcontents Only when using the optional argument.
11 Questions
11.1 Frequently Asked Questions
This section is devoted to Frequently Asked Questions. Please read it carefully; your
problem might be solved by this section.
Q2 I’m getting errors or unexpected output when compiling the simplest example!
A2 Did you read section 8?
Q3 I made a typo in the slide code, ran the file, got an error, corrected the typo and reran,
but now get an error that doesn’t go away.
A3 Remove the .bm and .toc files and try again.
Q5 My pstricks nodes appear on all overlays. Also: color doesn’t seem to work with
\onslide.
A5 Some PostScript tricks like nodes and color do not work with \onslide. Use \onslide*
instead. See an example below.
\documentclass{powerdot}
\usepackage{pst-node}
\begin{document}
\begin{slide}{Color}
\onslide*{2}{\cnode(0,-5pt){2pt}{A}}
This is {\onslide*{2-}{\color{red}} red} text.
\onslide*{2}{\cnode(0,-5pt){2pt}{B}}
\onslide{2}{\ncline{A}{B}}
15 There are several environments doing similar things as align. Another example is the split environ-
ment, but more (often from the amsmath package) can cause similar trouble for \pause.
39
\end{slide}
\end{document}
If your question has not been answered at this point, advance to the next section
to read where to find more answers.
11.2 Mailinglist
powerdot has a mailinglist from freelists.org and has its website here:
http://www.freelists.org/list/powerdot
There is a link to ‘List Archive’. Please search this archive before posting a question.
Your problem might already have been solved in the past.
If that is not the case, use the box on the page to type your e-mail address, choose
the action ‘Subscribe’ and click ‘Go!’. Then follow the instructions that arrive to you
by e-mail. At a certain moment, you can login for the first time using an authoriza-
tion code sent to you by e-mail. After logging in, you can create a password for future
sessions using the ‘Main Menu’ button. The other buttons provide you some info and
options for your account.
When you are all set, you can write to the list by sending an e-mail to
16 Make sure that you confirm that the bug is really caused by powerdot and not by another package that
you use.
40
powerdot[at]freelists[dot]org
When writing to the list, please keep in mind the following very important issues.
1. We are volunteers!
2. Keep your questions related to powerdot.
3. Always supply a minimal example demonstrating your problem.
4. Don’t send big files over the list.
References
[1] Hendri Adriaens. HA-prosper package. CTAN:/macros/latex/contrib/
HA-prosper.
[12] Frank Mittelbach and Michel Goossens. The LATEX Companion. Tools and Tech-
niques for Computer Typesetting. Addison-Wesley, Boston, Massachusetts, 2 edi-
tion, 2004. With Johannes Braams, David Carlisle, and Chris Rowley.
41
[14] Sebastian Rahtz and Heiko Overdiek. hyperref package. CTAN:/macros/latex/
contrib/hyperref.
Acknowledgements
The author is grateful to Christopher Ellison for help with setting up the package, styles
and examples, Mael Hilléreau for contributing the LYX layout file and description, and
Herbert Voß for contributions and maintaining the package from 2006 to 2012. Fur-
ther, I would like to thank all style contributors (see section 7). Moreover, I wish to
thank everyone who contributed to this package in any other way.
Ramon van den Akker, David Carlisle, Pavel Čížek, Darren Dale, Hans Mar-
ius Eikseth, Alexander Grahn, Morten Høgholm, András Horváth, Laurent
Jacques, Akira Kakuto, Uwe Kern, Kyanh, Theo Stewart, and Don P. Story.
Version history
For more information on bug fixes, typeset the source code documentation (see sec-
tion 12).
v1.0 (2005/09/04)
General: Initial release . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .............. 1
v1.1 (2005/09/19)
General: blackslide options adds hyperlink to slide and section titles .............. 1
Added elcolors, aggie, husky and sailor styles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .............. 1
Added tocsecindent and tocslideindent options . . . . . . . . . . . .............. 1
Added graphical examples of styles to documentation . . . . . . . . . . . .............. 1
Added LYX layout, description and example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .............. 1
Changed size=10 to size=10pt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .............. 1
Extended FAQ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .............. 1
Fixed some small bugs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .............. 1
Improved tycja, ciment and fyma styles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .............. 1
Improved section title handling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .............. 1
v1.2 (2005/10/09)
General: Added upen and bframe styles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .............. 1
Simplified coding of most styles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .............. 1
Solved some small bugs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .............. 1
Speeded up compilations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .............. 1
v1.3 (2005/12/06)
General: Added horatio, paintings, klope, jefka and pazik styles . . . . . . .............. 1
Added clock feature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .............. 1
Added examples and example file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .............. 1
Added logo feature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .............. 1
Added optional argument to \maketitle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .............. 1
Added palettes feature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .............. 1
Added palettes to default, fyma and sailor styles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .............. 1
Added possibility to create horizontal table of contents . . . . . . . . . . .............. 1
Added random dots feature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .............. 1
Added two slide processing methods to do verbatim on slides easily .............. 1
Cleaned up options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .............. 1
Improved figure and table handling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .............. 1
42
Revised docs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ......... 1
Solved some small bugs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ......... 1
Updated all styles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ......... 1
Updated LYX example and information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ......... 1
v1.4 (2005/12/10)
General: blackslide and emptyslide no longer have logos or randomdots ......... 1
Added cf option . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ......... 1
Added clockformat and clockrefresh keys to global family . . . . . . . . ......... 1
Moved lf and rf keys from global to glslide family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ......... 1
Moved footers out of slide box in handout mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ......... 1
Solved some small bugs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ......... 1
Updated styles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ......... 1
v1.5a (2015/11/29)
General: Added requirement for pst-ovl to get overlays working after pstricks
moved the code there . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
v1.5b (2017/07/22)
General: Added requirement for latest graphicx to work with latest dvips . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Updated documentation with respect to handout options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
v1.5c (2017/08/28)
General: Replaced clock code by the version by Alexander Grahn to achieve
compatibility with the animate package . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
v1.5 (2014/01/01)
General: Modifications to work with the latest version of pstricks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Option blackslide transformed to pauseslide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Restored package and added changes from CTAN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
v1.6 (2021/03/25)
General: Replaced usage of general @inputcheck by package specific pd@vrbout to
solve a bug with references . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
v1.7 (2021/05/19)
General: Added paper with 16:9 ratio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Index
Numbers written in italic refer to the page where the corresponding entry is described;
numbers underlined refer to the code line of the definition; numbers in roman refer to
the code lines where the entry is used.
B D
bm (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 \date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
bottomsep (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 dbright (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
display (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
C dmaxdots (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
cf (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 dmaxheight (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
cf- (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 dmaxsize (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
clock (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 dmaxwidth (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
43
dmindots (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 pauseslide (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
dminheight (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 \pd@noportrait . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
dminsize (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 \pd@sectiontitle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
dminwidth (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 \pd@slidetitle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
dprop (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 \pd@title . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
\pd@tocdisplay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
E \pd@tochighlight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
emptyslide (environment) . . . . . . . . . . 17 \pd@tocsection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
enumerate (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 \pd@tocslide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
\pddefinelyxtemplate . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
F \pddefinepalettes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
fleqn (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 \pddefinetemplate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
frsep (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 \pdifsetup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
\pdsetup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
H
hlentries (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 R
hlsections (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 randomdots (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
rcolwidth (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
I rf (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7
iacolor (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 rf- (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
ifsetup (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 rfrheight (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
inactive color . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12, 14, 16 rfrprop (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
indent (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
S
\item . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
\savevalue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
itemize (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . ....... 6
sectemp (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
\section . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
L
size (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
lcolwidth (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
slide (environment) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
leqno (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
slide (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
lf (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7
stoc- (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
lf- (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
style (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
lfrheight (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
lfrprop (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 T
lineheight (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 \tableofcontents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
lineprop (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 template (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
list (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 text- (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
logocmd (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 thebibliography (environment) . . . . . 18
logohook (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 thenote (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ... 6
logopos (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 theslide (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ... 6
\title . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
M title- (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
\maketitle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 toc (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
method (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 toc- (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
mode (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 tocfrsep (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
tochlcolor (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
N tochltcolor (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
nopsheader (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 tocsecindent (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
note (environment) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 tocsecm (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
ntoc- (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 tocsecsep (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
tocsection (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
O tocslideindent (option) . . . . . . . . . . . 33
\onslide . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 tocslidesep (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
\onslide* . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 toctcolor (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
\onslide+ . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 topsep (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
orient (option) . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 trans (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ...7
\twocolumn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
P type (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12, 16
palette (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
paper (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 U
\pause . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 \usevalue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
44
V W
verbatim (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 widesectemp (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
45