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The powerdot class ∗

Hendri Adriaens Christopher Ellison

v1.3 (2005/12/06)

Abstract

powerdot is a presentation class for L

X 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 L

layout ﬁle is provided.

Contents

1 Introduction 2

2 Setting up the presentation 2

2.1 Document class options . . 3

2.2 Setup options . . . . . . . . 5

3 Making slides 9

3.1 The title slide . . . . . . . . 9

3.2 Other slides . . . . . . . . . 9

4 Overlays 10

4.1 The \pause command . . . 11

4.2 List environments . . . . . . 11

4.3 The \item command . . . . 12

4.4 The \onslide command . 13

4.5 Relative overlays . . . . . . . 14

5 Presentation structure 14

5.1 Making sections . . . . . . . 14

5.2 Making an overview . . . . 15

6 Miscellaneous 16

6.1 Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

6.2 Empty slides . . . . . . . . . 16

6.3 Bibliography slide . . . . . . 17

6.4 Verbatim on slides . . . . . 17

6.5 The \twocolumn command 18

7 Available styles 20

8 Compiling your presentation 25

8.1 Dependencies . . . . . . . . 25

8.2 Creating and viewing output 25

9 Creating your own style 26

9.1 General information . . . . 26

9.2 Deﬁning palettes . . . . . . 27

9.3 Deﬁning templates . . . . . 28

9.4 Controlling setup . . . . . . 28

9.5 Main components . . . . . 29

9.6 Slide toc . . . . . . . . . . . 31

9.7 Miscellaneous options . . . 32

9.8 Template presets . . . . . . 33

9.9 The background . . . . . . . 33

9.10 Title slide, titles and sections 34

9.11 Testing the style . . . . . . . 34

10 Using L

YX for presentations 35

10.1 How to use the layout . . . 35

10.2 Support of syntax . . . . . . 36

10.3 Compiling with L

YX . . . . . 37

10.4 Extending the layout . . . . 37

11 Questions 38

11.1 Frequently Asked Questions 38

11.2 Mailinglist . . . . . . . . . . 39

12 Source code documentation 40

References 40

Acknowledgements 41

Version history 41

Index 42

∗This class can be downloaded from the CTAN mirrors: /macros/latex/contrib/powerdot. See

powerdot.dtx for information on installing powerdot into your L

EX distribution and for the license of

this class.

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 L

EX 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 L

YX [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 Setting up the presentation

This section will describe all options that are available to control the output of the

presentation and the looks of it.

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 value1will 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.

This options controls the kind of output that we want to produce. The preset valueoption

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.

nopagebreaks

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 L

EX decide on the

places to insert a page break, namely when a page is full.

This option has three possible values. The preset value is screen.option

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

A4 paper will be used for the presentation or handout.

paper=letterpaper

Letter size paper will be used.

Some important information with respect to paper size, compiling and viewing pre-

sentations is available in section 8.

This controls the orientation of the presentation. The preset value is landscape.option

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.

1The value that will be used when you don’t use the option.

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.

This controls the production of slides and notes. The preset value is slides.option

display display=slides

This will only typeset the slides in your presentation.

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

This will typeset the notes only.

Here are some more options to control the output.

sizeoption

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

styleoption

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.

fleqnoption

fleqn This option makes equations ﬂushed left. It does the same as the equally named

option for the article class.

leqnooption

leqno Put equation numbers at the left. Also the same as in the article class.

nopsheaderoption

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.

hlentriesoption

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.

hlsectionsoption

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.

2Note 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.

blackslideoption

blackslide 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.

clockoptions

clock This displays a small digital clock on slides which you can use to check the time

left for your presentation.

Here is an example of a \documentclass command.

\documentclass[

size=12pt,

paper=screen,

mode=present,

display=slidesnotes,

style=tycja,

nopagebreaks,

blackslide,

fleqn

]{powerdot}

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,

nopagebreaks,

blackslide,

fleqn

]{powerdot}

Changing the paper and mode options, now produces a handout with possibly more

than two slides per page due to the nopagebreaks option.

2.2 Setup options

There are several extra options that can help customizing your presentation. These\pdsetup

options are not available via the \documentclass command. This has a technical

reason.3We 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).

2.2.1 Global options

This section describes options that can only be used globally in the preamble of your

presentation via the \pdsetup command.

paletteoption

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.

3The interested reader is referred to the section about the xkvltxp package in the xkeyval package docu-

mentation [2].

lf rfoptions

rf This determines the content of the left footer and right footers. These are preset

to empty.

theslideoption

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

thenoteoption

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.

countersoption

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

EX 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}

listoption

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].

enumerate itemizeoptions

enumerate

itemize As the list option, but only control enumerate and itemize environments re-

spectively.

2.2.2 Global and local options

This section describes options that can be used both globally via \pdsetup and locally

via slide environments (see section 3).

transoption

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

4We use the starred version of \pageref which is deﬁned by hyperref and does not create a link to the

page that it is referring to.

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.

methodoption

method This option can be used when a slide contains special material that does not

get treated in the ‘usual’ way by L

EX. 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.

logohook logopos logocmdoptions

logohook

logopos

logocmd

If logopos is speciﬁed, a logo deﬁned by the value of the logocmd option

will be put on slides. The position can be speciﬁed relative to the width

and height of the slide. {0,0} is the lower left corner of the paper and

{\slidewidth,\slideheight} is the upper right corner. For positioning the

logo, the \rput command of pstricks [15, 16] is used. This command also allows

to specify the point of the logo that should be positioned there. This point can

be entered via the logohook option and can take the values tl,t,tr,r,Br,br,

b,bl,Bl,l,Band c. For more information about \rput, consult the pstricks

documentation. Here is an example that integrates the ﬂower of the default style

into the husky style.

\documentclass[style=husky]{powerdot}

\pdsetup{

logohook=t,

logopos={.088\slidewidth,.99\slideheight},

logocmd={\includegraphics[height=.08\slideheight]{powerdot-default.ps}}

}

\begin{document}

...

\end{document}

The preset value for logohook is tl.

A special feature of powerdot, which can be used to make presentations come alive,

is the use of random dots. These dots will be placed anywhere on your slides and use

the colors deﬁned by the palette that you use. Overlays will carry the same dots. This

feature uses random.tex [3]. Several options are available to control the appearance

of the random dots.

randomdotsoption

randomdots By default, random dots are turned off. If this option is set to true, random dots

will be generated. false will turn off the feature. When no value is submitted to

the option, true will be used.

dmindots dmaxdotsoptions

dmindots

dmaxdots The number of dots per slide is also random. These options set the minimum

and maximum dots per slide. Preset values are 5and 40, respectively.

dminsize dmaxsizeoptions

dminsize

dmaxsize The minimum and maximum radius of the dots. Preset values are 5pt and 40pt,

respectively.

dminwidth dmaxwidth dminheight dmaxheightoptions

dminwidth

dmaxwidth

dminheight

dmaxheight

These options determine the area on the slide that can be used for the random

dots. These values are preset such that dots go anywhere on the slide, but you

might want to adjust these such that, for instance, dots can only appear in the

text area. The preset values are 0pt,\slidewidth,0pt,\slideheight.

Here is an example that allows dots in a smaller rectangle on the slide.

\pdsetup{

dminwidth=.1\slidewidth,dmaxwidth=.9\slidewidth,

dminheight=.2\slideheight,dmaxheight=.8\slideheight

}

dbrightoption

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.

dpropoption

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 [15, 16]. 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).

Here are two examples for the use of random dots.

\pdsetup{

randomdots,dminwidth=.2\slidewidth

}

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.

2.2.3 \pdsetup example

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.

3 Making slides

3.1 The title slide

The title slide is created by the \maketitle command.\title

\author

\and

\date

\maketitle

\maketitle[〈options〉]

Its use is the same as in the standard L

EX document classes. The optional argument

〈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 L

EX manual [12] for more information on

commands such as \title and \author.

3.2 Other slides

The centerpiece of every presentation is the slide. In powerdot, the content of eachslide

slide is placed in a slide environment.

\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.

tocoption

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.

bmoption

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 L

EX commands that do not render correctly in the

bookmarks.5When 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 L

EX, i2= −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.

5The bookmarking procedure uses \pdfstringdef from the hyperref package, and it can process ac-

cented characters such as \"i.

4.1 The \pause command

The easiest way to display information sequentially is to use the \pause command.\pause

\pause[〈number〉]

Below is a simple example:

\begin{slide}{Simple overlay}

power\pause dot

\end{slide}

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,

\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 Cwill 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.

4.2 List environments

The list environments, itemize and enumerate, have special treatments in powerdot.

They have an optional argument that will be taken care off by the enumitem package

(see [4]). powerdot supplies an extra key for this optional argument. In the examples

that follow, features will be described using the itemize environment but they also

apply to the enumerate environment.

Here is the typical usage of the itemize environment:

\begin{slide}{Basic itemize}

\begin{itemize}

\item A \pause

\item B \pause

\item C

\end{itemize}

\end{slide}

The display is simple, each item appears one at a time with each overlay.

Suppose we wanted every item to show, but we only wanted one item to appearoption

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.

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 Aand Bon the ﬁrst overlay, but Bis inactive. On overlay 2, Bwill become

active and on overlay 3, Cwill become visible.

4.3 The \item command

The \item command has an extra optional argument in powerdot which allows for\item

creating overlays in a more ﬂexible way then \pause provides.

\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

xOnly overlay x

-x All overlays up to and including x

x- All overlays from x, including x

x-y All overlays from xto y, including xand y

Table 1: \item and \onslide notation

optional argument for \item in L

EX. A L

EX 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}

Here we have said that Ashould only be active on overlay 1, Bshould only be active on

overlay 2, and Cshould 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.

4.4 The \onslide command

Overlays can also be achieved using the \onslide command.\onslide

\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.

Consider the above example with the following modiﬁcations:\onslide+

\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.

Instead of hiding and reserving space (\onslide) or putting 〈text〉in the inactive\onslide*

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.

\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}

4.5 Relative overlays

Sometimes it is a pain to keep track of when an item should appear or become active.

You might, for example, just care that some text appears on the overlay after some

other item. This functionality is provided through the use of relative overlays which

should not be used outside list environments that use \item. Let’s consider a simple,

illuminating example.

\begin{slide}{Relative overlays}

\begin{itemize}

\item A \pause

\item B \onslide{+1}{(visible 1 overlay after B)}\pause

\item C \onslide{+2-}{(appears 2 overlays after C, visible until the end)}

\pause

\item D \onslide{+1-6}{(appears 1 overlay after D, visible until overlay 6)}

\pause

\item E \pause

\item F \pause

\item G \onslide{+1-+3}{(appears 1 overlay after G for 3 overlays)}\pause

\item H \pause

\item I \pause

\item J \pause

\item K

\End{itemize}

\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

This section describes the \section command which provides a way to structure a\section

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.

This option controls the creation of a section in the table of contents. The presetoption

tocsection value is true.

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.

This option controls whether the \section command creates a slide. The presetoption

slide value is true.

slide=true

A slide is created.

slide=false

No slide will be created. If also tocsection is false, the \section command

doesn’t do anything. If it does create a table of contents section (tocsection=

true or hidden), its link will point to the ﬁrst slide in the section as the section

itself doesn’t have a slide.

This option can be used to make the section slide with another template. By de-option

template fault, a normal slide environment is used to create the section slide, but if a style of-

fers other templates that could be used for this purpose (for instance, the wideslide

environment), then you can use this option to select that template. See section 7 for

an overview of the available templates with every style.

Finally, all options available to normal slides are available to slides created by

\section as well (see section 3). However, when the section does make a tocsection,

toc= or bm= won’t remove the table of contents entry or the bookmark respectively.

5.2 Making an overview

This command creates an overview of your presentation and can only be used on a\tableofcontents

slide.

\tableofcontents[〈options〉]

There are several 〈options〉to control the output of this command.

This option controls whether certain material (depending on the input in theoption

type content option below) will be hidden or displayed in the inactive color. The preset

value is 0. Compare with the type option for list environments (section 4.2).

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.

The content option controls which elements will be included in the overview. Theoption

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.

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

This displays only the sections in the presentation.

content=currentsection

This displays the current section only.

content=future

This displays all content starting from the current slide.

content=futuresections

This displays all sections, starting from the current section.

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

The note environment can be used to make personal notes that accompany a slide.note

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}

6.2 Empty slides

The emptyslide environment creates a totally empty slide. The text box on the slideemptyslide

can be used for special things like displaying photos. This allows for creating a dia

show. Example:

\begin{emptyslide}{}

\centering

\vspace{\stretch{1}}

\includegraphics[height=0.8\slideheight]{me_chewing_gum.eps}

\vspace{\stretch{1}}

\end{emptyslide}

The \includegraphics command is deﬁned by the graphicx package [5]. The

\stretch command is used to vertically center the picture. Both commands are de-

scribed in your favorite L

EX manual, for instance [12]. Note that you can use the

lengths \slideheight and \slidewidth to scale pictures to ﬁt nicely on the slide.

6.3 Bibliography slide

powerdot redeﬁnes the standard article thebibliography environment to suppressthebibliography

the creation of a section heading and running headers. All other properties are main-

tained. You can do either of the next two (depending whether you are using BiBT

EX or

not):

\begin{slide}{Slide}

\cite{someone}

\end{slide}

\begin{slide}{References}

\begin{thebibliography}{1}

\bibitem{someone} Article of someone.

\end{thebibliography}

\end{slide}

\begin{slide}{Slide}

\cite{someone}

\end{slide}

\begin{slide}{References}

\bibliographystyle{plain}

\bibliography{YourBib}

\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 L

EX manual for more information about citations and

bibliographies.

6.4 Verbatim on slides

powerdot has three different methods of processing slides, from which two have mainlyoption

verbatim been developed to make the inclusion of verbatim content6on slides easier. These

methods can be accessed by the method key which is available in slide environments

and the \pdsetup command (see section 2.2.2).

method=normal

This is the preset method for processing slides. It is fast and allows for overlays,

but it does not allow for verbatim.7

6And other content that needs catcode changes when processing.

7Except when it has been saved in a box outside the slide.

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.

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.

6.5 The \twocolumn command

The \twocolumn macro allows to split content into two columns.\twocolumn

\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.

lineheightoption

lineheight If lineheight is speciﬁed, a line of the speciﬁed height will be created using

\psline in between the two columns. Example: lineheight=6cm.

linepropoption

lineprop Any pstricks declaration to specify the line properties. Example:

lineprop={linestyle=dotted,linewidth=3pt}

lfrheight lfrpropoptions

lfrheight

lfrprop The ﬁrst creates a frame of the speciﬁed height around the left column. The

second is as lineprop, but for the left frame.

rfrheight rfrpropoptions

rfrheight

rfrprop As lfrheight and lfrprop, but for the right frame.

lcolwidth rcolwidthoptions

lcolwidth

rcolwidth Width of the left and right columns. Both are preset to: 0.47\linewidth.

frsepoption

frsep Space between text and the frames. Preset: 1.5mm.

colsepoption

colsep Space between the two columns. Preset: 0.06\linewidth.

topsepoption

topsep The extra space (additional to \baselineskip) between text above the columns

and the text within the columns. Preset: 0cm.

bottomsepoption

bottomsep Idem for the bottom of the columns. Preset: 0cm.

indentoption

indent Horizontal indent left to the left column. Preset: 0cm.

The dimensions described above are represented graphically in ﬁgure 1. Important

to notice is that the \twocolumn macro uses the current cursor position as the refer-

ence point to position the ﬁrst line of text of the left column (see also ﬁgure 1). This

means that optional frames can extend to the text on the previous line. Use for in-

stance topsep=0.3cm in that case to add extra space between the two lines of text.

The preset value of topsep is based on the situation that there is no text on top of the

two columns. In that case, it is best to locate the ﬁrst line of text of the left column at

the same spot as text that is not created by \twocolumn on other slides. The setting

topsep=0cm does exactly this. However, with a combination of topsep and indent

you can change this behavior and position the ﬁrst line of text of the left column any-

where you want.

The \twocolumn macro computes the height of the construction to position text

below the construction correctly. The computation is done by taking the maximum

height of lfrheight,rfrheight,lineheight (if speciﬁed) and the left and right col-

umn content. Hence when frames nor a line is requested, bottomsep is the vertical

space between the lowest line of text in the columns and the text below the columns

(additional to \baselineskip). Here is an example.

\begin{slide}{Two columns}

Here are two columns.

\twocolumn[

lfrprop={linestyle=dotted,linewidth=3pt},

lfrheight=4cm,rfrheight=5cm,lineheight=3cm,topsep=0.3cm

]{left}{right}

Those were two columns.

\end{slide}

Top

Left column text Right column text

Bottom

1 2

5 5

Meaning of the labels

1lcolwidth 5frsep

2rcolwidth 6topsep

3colsep 7indent

4lfrheight,rfrheight, 8 bottomsep

lineheight 9 Reference point

Figure 1: Two-column dimensions.

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.

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.

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.

left footer right footer – 1 / 2

Example of the default style

Hendri Adriaens Christopher Ellison

December 4, 2005

Example slide

left footer right footer – 2 / 2

Here is the binomium formula.

(a+b)n=

k=0 n

k!an−kbk(1)

We will prove formula (1) on the blackboard.

■Here

◆is

■a

◆list

■with

◆seven

■items.

simple

This is a simple style in black and white. This style could be useful if you want to

print your slides.

left footer right footer – 1 / 2

Example of the simple style

Hendri Adriaens Christopher Ellison

December 4, 2005

Example slide

left footer right footer – 2 / 2

Here is the binomium formula.

(a+b)n=

k=0 n

kan−kbk(1)

We will prove formula (1) on the blackboard.

Here

–is

⊲a

■list

⊲with

–seven

items.

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.

left footer right footer – 1 / 2

Example of the tycja style

Hendri Adriaens Christopher Ellison

December 4, 2005

Example slide

left footer right footer – 2 / 2

Here is the binomium formula.

(a+b)n=

k=0 n

k!an−kbk(1)

We will prove formula (1) on the blackboard.

■Here

◆is

■a

◆list

■with

◆seven

■items.

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 of the ikeda style

Hendri Adriaens Christopher Ellison

December 4, 2005

Example slide

left footer right footer – 2 / 2

Here is the binomium formula.

(a+b)n=

k=0 n

k!an−kbk(1)

We will prove formula (1) on the blackboard.

■Here

▲is

■a

▲list

■with

▲seven

■items.

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.

left footer right footer – 1 / 2

Example of the fyma style

Hendri Adriaens Christopher Ellison

December 4, 2005

Example slide

left footer right footer – 2 / 2

Here is the binomium formula.

(a+b)n=

k=0 n

k!an−kbk(1)

We will prove formula (1) on the blackboard.

•Here

◦is

•a

◦list

•with

◦seven

•items.

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.

left footer right footer – 1 / 2

Example of the ciment style

Hendri Adriaens Christopher Ellison

December 4, 2005

Example slide

left footer right footer – 2 / 2

Here is the binomium formula.

(a+b)n=

k=0 n

k!an−kbk(1)

We will prove formula (1) on the blackboard.

■Here

◆is

■a

◆list

■with

◆seven

■items.

elcolors

This is a style using light shades of the elementary colors red, blue and yellow.

left footer right footer – 1 / 2

Example of the elcolors style

Hendri Adriaens Christopher Ellison

December 4, 2005

Example slide

left footer right footer – 2 / 2

Here is the binomium formula.

(a+b)n=

k=0 n

k!an−kbk(1)

We will prove formula (1) on the blackboard.

■Here

◆is

■a

◆list

■with

◆seven

■items.

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.

left footer right footer – 1 / 2

Example of the aggie style

Hendri Adriaens Christopher Ellison

December 4, 2005

Example slide

left footer right footer – 2 / 2

Here is the binomium formula.

(a+b)n=

k=0 n

k!an−kbk(1)

We will prove formula (1) on the blackboard.

●Here

✦is

■a

◆list

■with

✦seven

●items.

husky

This style is created by Jack Stalnaker and has a background of light gray sun

beams combined with dark red highlights.

left footer right footer – 1 / 2

Example of the husky style

Hendri Adriaens Christopher Ellison

December 4, 2005

Example slide

left footer right footer – 2 / 2

Here is the binomium formula.

(a+b)n=

k=0 n

k!an−kbk(1)

We will prove formula (1) on the blackboard.

●Here

✦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.

left footer right footer – 1 / 2

Example of the sailor style

Hendri Adriaens Christopher Ellison

December 4, 2005

Example slide

left footer right footer – 2 / 2

Here is the binomium formula.

(a+b)n=

k=0 n

kan−kbk(1)

We will prove formula (1) on the blackboard.

Here

is

a

list

with

seven

items.

upen

This style has a nice dark blue background and text in yellow. It is contributed by

Piskala Upendran.

left footer right footer – 1 / 2

Example of the upen style

Hendri Adriaens Christopher Ellison

December 4, 2005

Example slide

left footer right footer – 2 / 2

Here is the binomium formula.

(a+b)n=

k=0 n

k!an−kbk(1)

We will prove formula (1) on the blackboard.

■Here

—is

▲a

◦list

▲with

—seven

■items.

bframe

The bframe style has blue frames on the slide in which text is positioned. The

style is contributed by Piskala Upendran.

left footer right footer – 1 / 2

Example of the bframe style

Hendri Adriaens Christopher Ellison

December 4, 2005

Example slide

left footer right footer – 2 / 2

Here is the binomium formula.

(a+b)n=

k=0 n

k!an−kbk(1)

We will prove formula (1) on the blackboard.

■Here

◆is

■a

◆list

■with

◆seven

■items.

horatio

The horatio style has been contributed by Michael Lundholm and is a more con-

servative blue style.

left footer right footer – 1 / 2

Example of the horatio style

Hendri Adriaens Christopher Ellison

December 4, 2005

Example slide

left footer right footer – 2 / 2

Here is the binomium formula.

(a+b)n=

k=0 n

k!an−kbk(1)

We will prove formula (1) on the blackboard.

✔Here

✘is

✓a

✗list

✓with

✘seven

✔items.

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.8If 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 of the paintings style

Hendri Adriaens Christopher Ellison

December 4, 2005

Example slide

left footer right footer

Here is the binomium formula.

(a+b)n=

k=0 n

k!an−kbk(1)

We will prove formula (1) on the blackboard.

•Here

•is

•a

•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.

8The 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.

Example of the klope style

Hendri Adriaens Christopher Ellison

December 4, 2005

Example slide

left footer right footer – 2 / 2

Here is the binomium formula.

(a+b)n=

k=0 n

k!an−kbk(1)

We will prove formula (1) on the blackboard.

■Here

◆is

■a

◆list

■with

◆seven

■items.

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 of the jefka style

Hendri Adriaens Christopher Ellison

December 4, 2005

Example slide

right footer – 2 / 2

Here is the binomium formula.

(a+b)n=

k=0 n

k!an−kbk(1)

We will prove formula (1) on the blackboard.

■Here

◆is

■a

◆list

■with

◆seven

■items.

pazik

This style is available in two palettes: red and brown. Below is a sample of the

default red palette.

Example of the pazik style

Hendri Adriaens Christopher Ellison

December 4, 2005

Example slide

left footer right footer – 2 / 2

Here is the binomium formula.

(a+b)n=

k=0 n

kan−kbk(1)

We will prove formula (1) on the blackboard.

■Here

◆is

■a

◆list

■with

◆seven

■items.

8 Compiling your presentation

8.1 Dependencies

In table 2 is a list of packages that powerdot uses to perform speciﬁc tasks. Depen-

dencies of packages in this table are not listed. In the table, ‘required’ means that you

should have a version at least as new as listed and ‘tested’ means that powerdot was

tested with this version, but that it could equally well work with an older or newer ver-

sion than the one listed in the table. So, when trying to solve an error, ﬁrst concentrate

on solving version issues for the ‘required’ packages. To ﬁnd out which version of a

package you are currently using, put \listfiles on the ﬁrst line of your document,

run it with L

EX, open the .log ﬁle and read the ﬁle list (see a L

EX manual for more

information). If you need to update a package, you can get it from CTAN [7].

8.2 Creating and viewing output

To compile your presentation, run it with L

EX. The DVI that is produced this way

can be viewed with MiKT

EX’s DVI viewer YAP.9Unfortunately, xdvi and kdvi (kile) do

9Unless you are using pstricks-add which distorts the coordinate system in DVI.

Package/ﬁle Version Date Required/tested

xkeyval [2] 2.5c 2005/07/10 required

pstricks.sty [15, 16] 0.2l 2004/05/12 required

xcolor [10] 1.11 2004/05/09 required

enumitem [4] 1.0 2004/07/19 required

article class 1.4f 2004/02/16 tested

geometry [14] 3.2 2002/07/08 tested

hyperref [13] 6.74m 2003/11/30 tested

graphicx [5] 1.0f 1999/02/16 tested

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.

9 Creating your own style

9.1 General information

Writing or customizing powerdot styles is simple. If you want to modify a style or

build a new one, locate the style that you want to use as basis in your T

EX tree (styles

are named as powerdot-<style_name>.sty), copy that and rename it as to avoid li-

cense10 or naming conﬂicts. You might want to install the new style in your local T

tree to be able to access it from any place on your hard drive. See your L

EX distribution

for more information.

Once that has been taken care of, we can start creating the style. We strongly rec-

ommend to study a style ﬁle (for example, powerdot-default.sty) while reading the

remainder of this section as it provides good examples for the content of this section.

A style has several components. We describe these components below.

Identiﬁcation and packages

This identiﬁes the package in the log of a presentation and loads all required

packages. The default style contains something like:

10The L

EX Public Project License requires renaming ﬁles when modifying them, see http://www.

latex-project.org/lppl.

\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 L

EX manual, for instance

[12].

Palette or color deﬁnitions

This section contains the deﬁnitions of palettes or colors that you want to use in

the style. powerdot uses xcolor (via pstricks). Hence, for more information about

colors, see the xcolor documentation. We will discuss palettes in more detail in

section 9.2.

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).

9.2 Deﬁning palettes

We will be deﬁning templates formally in section 9.3. For now, it’s enough to have the

general idea that a template controls the design of a slide. Palettes are sets of colors that

color a template or design. A palette does not change the overall design of a template.

The following command can be used to deﬁne palettes for your style.\pddefinepalettes

\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

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.

9.3 Deﬁning templates

We start off with a deﬁnition of what a template is. A template is a collection of set-

tings for slide components together with custom deﬁnitions, which controls the visual

appearance of a slide. A style can contain multiple templates.

\pddefinetemplate[〈basis〉]{〈name〉}{〈options〉}{〈commands〉}

This deﬁnes the environment 〈name〉to produce a slide with characteristics deter-\pddefinetemplate

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 blackslide,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.

9.4 Controlling setup

The 〈options〉(keys) are described in the following sections. You can control how theseoption

ifsetup options apply to the various setups by using the ifsetup key. Any key appearing be-

fore the ﬁrst ifsetup declaration in 〈options〉will apply to every possible setup. Once

the ifsetup key is used, then all subsequent key declarations will apply only to the

setups declared in the ifsetup key. The ifsetup key can be used multiple times.

By possible setups, we mean the allowed values of the mode,paper,orient, and

display keys that are described in section 2.1. If a value (or values!) for any of these

four keys is not speciﬁed in a ifsetup declaration, then all subsequent key declara-

tions will apply to any layout of that type. Consider the following as an example.

1...

2textpos={.2\slidewidth,.3\slideheight},%

3ifsetup={portrait,screen},%

4textpos={.3\slidewidth,.2\slideheight}%

5...

6ifsetup=landscape,%

7...

8ifsetup,

9...

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.

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〉}

This macro executes 〈true〉when the setup that the user chose matches with the\pdifsetup

〈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

This macro generates an error when the user requests portrait orientation. Notice that\pd@noportrait

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.

9.5 Main components

The 〈options〉control several key components of a slide. Every component has sev-

eral properties. A key that can be used in the 〈options〉argument is the name of the

component postﬁxed by its property that you want to control.

The components title,text,toc,stoc and ntoc have properties hook,pos,

width and font. Additionally, the text component has a height property. The com-

ponents lf and rf have properties hook,pos,temp and font. Hence, examples of

valid keys are titlefont,tocpos and lftemp. All components and properties will be

discussed below.

Here is an overview of the components that can be controlled from the 〈options〉

argument in \pddefinetemplate.

title-option

title- The slide title.

text-option

text- The main text box on the slide.

toc-option

toc- The (full) table of contents on a slide containing sections and slides.

stoc-option

stoc- This is a table of contents containing only the sections. See also ntoc below.

ntoc-option

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.

lf-option

lf- The left footer.

rf-option

rf- The right footer.

Notice that all positioning of components described above will be done with \rput

from pstricks [15, 16] internally. See the pstricks documentation for more information

about this command. It should also be noted that all components (except lf and rf)

put their content in a minipage environment.

Now we list all properties of the components listed above and describe what they

mean. Remember that keys are formed by combining a component name and a prop-

erty.

-hookoption

-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,Band c. See the pstricks documenta-

tion for more information.

-posoption

-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.

-widthoption

-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 and rf components.

-heightoption

-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.

-fontoption

-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.

-tempoption

-temp This property is only available for the footers (lf 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 dec-

laration by powerdot is the following.

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.

-orientoption

-orient This property is only available for the toc,stoc and ntoc components. This

property can be hor vand 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.

9.6 Slide toc

The small table of contents that is placed on slides can be controlled by four macros

and several options.

These macros take one argument. When building the table of contents, powerdot\pd@tocslide

\pd@tocsection ﬁrst passes the content through \pd@tocslide or \pd@tocsection, depending on

the type of entry that it is building at that moment. You could, for instance, do

\def\pd@tocslide#1{$\bullet$\ #1}

\def\pd@tocsection#1{#1}

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.

These two macros also take one argument. After processing an entry with the com-\pd@tocdisplay

\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.

tocfrsepoption

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.

tocsecsepoption

tocsecsep The distance inserted before a section (unless it is the ﬁrst element in the table

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.

tocslidesepoption

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.

tocsecindentoption

tocsecindent The horizontal space left to a section entry. Preset: 0pt.

tocslideindentoption

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.

tocsecmoption

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.

toctcoloroption

toctcolor This is the text color used for non-highlighted elements in the table of contents.

Preset: black.

tochltcoloroption

tochltcolor This is the text color used for highlighted elements in the table of contents. Pre-

set: white.

tochlcoloroption

tochlcolor This is the color used for the frame behind highlighted elements. Preset: black.

9.7 Miscellaneous options

There are some options that fall outside of the scope of the previous sections. These

will be discussed here.

iacoloroption

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 preset value for this key is lightgray.

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.

clockhook clockposoptions

clockhook

clockpos These work in the same way as the -hook and -pos properties discussed in sec-

tion 9.5. The preset value of clockhook is tr.

clockwidth clockheightoptions

clockwidth

clockheight These control the width and height of the text ﬁeld containing the clock. Preset

values come from hyperref and are 3cm and \baselineskip, respectively.

clockcharsizeoption

clockcharsize The size of characters of the clock. Preset: 14pt.

clockalignoption

clockalign The alignment of the clock in the text ﬁeld. 0is left-aligned, 1is centered and 2

is right aligned. Preset is 2.

clockcoloroption

clockcolor This determines the text color of the clock. The value should be a named color.

The preset value is black.

9.8 Template presets

Below, we have copied the preset setting for the keys described above. These will be

used if you didn’t supply other input for these keys in a particular template. If the

preset value meets your needs, you don’t have to specify it again in your style.

titlehook=Bl,titlepos=,titlewidth=\slidewidth,

titlefont=\raggedright,texthook=tl,textpos=,

textwidth=\slidewidth,textfont=\raggedright,

textheight=\slideheight,

tochook=tl,tocpos=,tocwidth=.2\slidewidth,

tocfont=\tiny\raggedright,

stochook=tl,stocpos=,stocwidth=.2\slidewidth,

stocfont=\tiny\raggedright,

ntochook=tl,ntocpos=,ntocwidth=.2\slidewidth,

ntocfont=\tiny\raggedright,

tocorient=v,stocorient=v,ntocorient=v,

tocfrsep=.5mm,tocsecsep=2ex,tocslidesep=0ex,

tocsecm=,toctcolor=black,tochlcolor=black,tochltcolor=white,

tocsecindent=0pt,tocslideindent=0pt,

lfhook=Bl,lfpos=,lffont=\scriptsize,lftemp=\pd@@lf,

rfhook=Br,rfpos=,rffont=\scriptsize,rftemp=\pd@@rf\ifx\pd@@rf\@empty

\else\ifx\theslide\@empty\else~--~\fi\fi\theslide,

iacolor=lightgray,

clockhook=tr,clockpos=,clockwidth=3cm,clockheight=\baselineskip,

clockcharsize=14pt,clockalign=2,clockcolor=black

9.9 The background

This leaves only one argument of the \pddefinetemplate macro undiscussed. This

is the 〈commands〉argument. This argument can contain any code that you want to

execute after setting the options and before building the slide components like the slide

title, main text, and footers. This argument is designed to contain declarations that will

build the background of a template using, for instance, pstricks, but it can also hold

other commands you might need for building your template.

Important to notice is that these commands may not create T

EX material as that

might destroy the construction of the slide. So, if you want to place the word ‘Hello’

in the bottom left corner of the slide, don’t type ‘Hello’, but make its width, height and

depth equal to zero, for instance by using pstricks’\rput.

\rput[bl](0,0){Hello}

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.

The \pd@slidetitle macro is used to typeset the slide title on slides. This macro\pd@slidetitle

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.

These macros are similar to \pd@slidetitle and typeset the title on the title slide\pd@title

\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.

The \section command uses (by default) the slide environment and puts theoptions

sectemp

widesectemp

section title in the title box with font titlefont. If you want to change the default use

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.

9.11 Testing the style

powerdot has a test ﬁle that should test most of the style. This test ﬁle can be produced

by running L

EX over powerdot.dtx. This generates powerdot-styletest.tex

which will help you with the testing job. Feel free to contact us when you would like to

contribute your style to powerdot. See also section 11.

10 Using L

YX for presentations

YX [6] is a WYSIWYM (What You See Is What You Mean) document processor based

on L

EX. It supports standard L

EX classes but needs special ﬁles, called layout ﬁles, in

order to support non-standard classes such as powerdot.

To start using L

YX for powerdot presentations, copy the layout ﬁle powerdot.layout

to the L

YX layout directory. You can ﬁnd this ﬁle in the doc tree of your L

EX 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 L

YX (Edit ⊲

Reconfigure and restart L

YX 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 L

YX documentation,

which is accessible from the Help menu.

10.1 How to use the layout

The powerdot L

YX layout provides some environments11 which can be used in L

YX.

Some of these environments (for instance Title or Itemize) are natural to use since

they exist also in the standard document classes such as article. For more information

on these standard environments, see the L

YX documentation.

This section will explain how to use the powerdot speciﬁc environments Slide,

WideSlide,EmptySlide and Note. These environments correspond to the powerdot

environments slide,emptyslide,wideslide and note.

We start with a simple example. The following L

EX code

\begin{slide}{Slide title}

Slide content.

\end{slide}

can be obtained using the following L

YX environments. The right column represents

the text typed into the L

YX window and the left column represents the environment

applied to this text).

Slide Slide title

Standard Slide content.

EndSlide

Some remarks concerning this example.

• 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 L

YX 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}

11Don’t confuse these with L

EX environments.

This can be done in L

YX in the following way.

Slide First slide title

Standard The first slide.

Note First note title

Standard The first note, concerning slide 1.

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

...

Options can be passed to slide environments by using Insert ⊲Short title in

front of the slide title. The following example uses the direct method (see section 6.4)

in the short title argument (delimited by square brackets) to allow for a lstlisting

environment (deﬁned by the listings package) within the slide content.

Slide [method=direct]Example of LaTeX source code

Standard Here’s the \HelloWorld command:

[ERT box:

\lstset{language=[LaTeX]TeX}

\begin{lstlisting}

\newcommand{\HelloWorld}{Hello World!}

\end{lstlisting}

]

EndSlide

Note that you are not obliged to use a verbatim environment to type the \HelloWord

text into the L

YX window because L

YX directly supports standard verbatim.12 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.

10.2 Support of syntax

This section lists options, commands and environments that are supported through

the L

YX interface directly, without using an ERT box (T

EX-mode).

All class options (see section 2.1) are supported via the Layout ⊲Document dialog

(Layout pane). Options for the \pdsetup command (see section 2) should be speci-

ﬁed in the Preamble pane of the Layout ⊲Document dialog.

Table 3 lists the powerdot commands that are supported in L

YX. Table 4 lists the

powerdot environments that, besides the earlier discussed slide,wideslide,note

and emptyslide environments, are supported in L

YX. Table 5 lists commands that

can only be done by using an ERT box (via Insert ⊲TeX). Note that you may use the

clipboard in order to repeat often used commands like \pause. Finally, table 6 lists

additional commands and environments that are supported by the layout.

12L

YX translates special characters into their corresponding L

EX command. For instance, the backslash

character is translated into \textbackslash. Resulting, the font is not the same as in true verbatim and

you might want to change that via the Layout ⊲Character dialog.

Command Method in L

\title Use Title environment.

\author Use Author environment.

\date Use Date environment.

\maketitle Managed directly by L

YX.

\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.

Table 3: Supported powerdot commands in L

Environment Method in L

itemize Use Itemize and ItemizeType1 environments. The

latter will create a list with type=1 (see section 4.2).

enumerate Use Enumerate and EnumerateType1 environments.

thebibliography Use Bibliography environment.

Table 4: Supported powerdot environments in L

10.3 Compiling with L

First of all, make sure that you have also read section 8. Then, in order to get a proper

PostScript or PDF ﬁle, you have to set your L

YX document properties depending on

which paper and orientation you want. When your L

YX document is open, go to the

Layout ⊲Document dialog. In the Layout pane, put the nopsheader,orient and

paper keys as class options (see section 2.1 for a description). Then, go to the Paper

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).

10.4 Extending the layout

If you have created a custom style (see section 9) which deﬁnes custom templates, you

may want to extend the layout ﬁle13 so that these templates are also supported in L

YX.

The explanation below assumes that you have deﬁned a template called sunnyslide.

To support this new template in L

YX, you have to use the following command.

\pddefinelyxtemplate〈cs〉{〈template〉}

This will deﬁne the control sequence 〈cs〉such that it will create a slide with template\pddefinelyxtemplate

〈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

13The LPPL dictates to rename a ﬁle if you modify it as to avoid confusion.

Command Method in L

\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.

Table 5: powerdot commands needing an ERT box in L

Env./Command Method in L

quote Use Quote environment.

quotation Use Quotation environment.

verse Use Verse environment.

\caption Use Caption environment within standard ﬂoat envi-

ronments.

Table 6: Additional environments for L

Note that you must begin the LatexName ﬁeld with lyxend. The deﬁnition of the L

template has been inserted in between Preamble and EndPreamble which assures

that the new L

YX environment will work in every presentation. After modifying the

layout ﬁle, don’t forget to restart L

YX. See for more information about creating L

YX en-

vironments, the documentation of L

YX in the Help menu.

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.

Q1 Does powerdot have example ﬁles? Where can I ﬁnd them?

A1 powerdot comes with several examples that should be in the doc tree of your L

EX in-

stallation. More precisely: texmf/doc/latex/powerdot. If you can’t ﬁnd them there,

download them from CTAN:/macros/latex/contrib/powerdot [7].

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.

Q4 \pause does not work in the align14 environment.

A4 align does several tricky things, which make it impossible to use \pause. Use

\onslide instead. See section 4.4.

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.

14There 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.

\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}}

\end{slide}

\end{document}

Q6 Do I need to edit style ﬁles to change a style a bit?

A6 No, you do not need to edit any style ﬁle. You can change any part of a certain style

using the \pddefinetemplate and \pddefinepalettes commands. Here is an ex-

ample that removes the right footer from the default style, moves the left footer to the

center and adds another palette.

\documentclass{powerdot}

\pddefinetemplate[slide]{slide}{

lfhook=Bc,lfpos={.5\slidewidth,.04\slideheight},

rfpos

}{}

\pddefinepalettes{mypalette}{

\definecolor{pdcolor1}{rgb}{.27,.31,.44}

\definecolor{pdcolor2}{rgb}{.85,.85,.92}

\definecolor{pdcolor3}{rgb}{.8,.75,.98}

}

\pdsetup{

lf=My presentation,

palette=mypalette

}

\begin{document}

\begin{slide}{Title}

\end{slide}

\end{document}

See section 9 for more information about these two commands.

Q7 Can I contribute to this project?

A7 Certainly. If you ﬁnd bugs15 or typos, please send a message to the mailinglist (see

section 11.2). If you have developed your own style that is distinct from existing styles

and would like to see it included in powerdot, please inform us by private e-mail and

we will consider your contribution. Notice that included contributions will fall under

the overall powerdot license and copyright notice, but that your name will be included

in the documentation when you make a contribution. This is done to guarantee that

we can adapt ﬁles if maintenance is needed.

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.

15Make sure that you conﬁrm that the bug is really caused by powerdot and not by another package that

you use.

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

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.

We hope you will enjoy this service.

12 Source code documentation

In case you want regenerate the package ﬁles from the source or want to have a

look at the source code description, locate powerdot.dtx, search in the ﬁle for

\OnlyDescription and remove that and do

latex powerdot.dtx

bibtex powerdot

makeindex -s gglo.ist -o powerdot.gls powerdot.glo

makeindex -s gind.ist -o powerdot.ind powerdot.idx

latex powerdot.dtx

References

[1] Hendri Adriaens. HA-prosper package. CTAN:/macros/latex/contrib/

HA-prosper.

[2] Hendri Adriaens. xkeyval package. CTAN:/macros/latex/contrib/xkeyval.

[3] Donald Arseneau. random.tex.CTAN:/macros/generic/misc.

[4] Javier Bezos. enumitem package. CTAN:/macros/latex/contrib/enumitem.

[5] David Carlisle. graphics bundle. CTAN:/macros/latex/required/graphics.

[6] L

YX crew. L

YX website. http://www.lyx.org.

[7] CTAN crew. The Comprehensive TeX Archive Network. http://www.ctan.org.

[8] Patrick W. Daly. natbib package. CTAN:/macros/latex/contrib/natbib.

[9] Frédéric Goualard and Peter Møller Neergaard. prosper class. CTAN:/macros/

latex/contrib/prosper.

[10] Uwe Kern. xcolor package. CTAN:/macros/latex/contrib/xcolor.

[11] James Kilﬁger and Wolfgang May. extsizes bundle. CTAN:/macros/latex/

contrib/extsizes.

[12] Frank Mittelbach and Michel Goossens. The L

EX Companion. Tools and Tech-

niques for Computer Typesetting. Addison-Wesley, Boston, Massachusetts, 2 edi-

tion, 2004. With Johannes Braams, David Carlisle, and Chris Rowley.

[13] Sebastian Rahtz and Heiko Overdiek. hyperref package. CTAN:/macros/latex/

contrib/hyperref.

[14] Hideo Umeki. geometry package. CTAN:/macros/latex/contrib/geometry.

[15] Herbert Voß. PSTricks website. http://pstricks.tug.org.

[16] Timothy Van Zandt et al. PSTricks package, v1.07, 2005/05/06. CTAN:

/graphics/pstricks.

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Mael Hilléreau for contributing the L

YX layout ﬁle and de-

scription. Further, we like to thank all style contributors (see section 7). Moreover, we

wish to thank everyone who contributed to this package in any other way.

Ramon van den Akker, Pavel ˇ

Cížek, Darren Dale, Hans Marius Eikseth, Morten

Høgholm, András Horváth, Laurent Jacques, Akira Kakuto, Uwe Kern, Kyanh,

Theo Stewart, Don P. Story and Herbert Voß.

We hope not to have forgotten anyone.

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 L

YX 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

Revised docs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Solved some small bugs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Updated all styles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Updated L

YX example and information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 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.

Symbols

-font (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

-height (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

-hook (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

-orient (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

-pos (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

-temp (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

-width (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

\and . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

\author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

blackslide (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

bm (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

bottomsep (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

clock (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

clockalign (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

clockcharsize (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

clockcolor (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

clockheight (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

clockhook (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

clockpos (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

clockwidth (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

colsep (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

content (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

counters (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

\date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

dbright (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

display (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

dmaxdots (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

dmaxheight (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

dmaxsize (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

dmaxwidth (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

dmindots (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

dminheight (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

dminsize (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

dminwidth (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

dprop (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

emptyslide (environment) . . . . . . . . . . 16

enumerate (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

fleqn (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

frsep (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

hlentries (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

hlsections (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

iacolor (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

ifsetup (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

inactive color . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12, 13,15

indent (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

\item ........................... 12

itemize (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

lcolwidth (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

leqno (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

lf (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

lf- (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

lfrheight (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

lfrprop (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

lineheight (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

lineprop (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

list (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

logocmd (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

logohook (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

logopos (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

\maketitle ....................... 9

method (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

mode (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

nopsheader (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

note (environment) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

ntoc- (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

\onslide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

\onslide* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

\onslide+ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

orient (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

palette (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

paper (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

\pause . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

\pd@noportrait . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

\pd@sectiontitle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

\pd@slidetitle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

\pd@title . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

\pd@tocdisplay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

\pd@tochighlight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

\pd@tocsection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

\pd@tocslide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

\pddefinelyxtemplate . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

\pddefinepalettes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

\pddefinetemplate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

\pdifsetup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

\pdsetup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

randomdots (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

rcolwidth (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

rf (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

rf- (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

rfrheight (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

rfrprop (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

\savevalue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

sectemp (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

\section . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

size (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

slide (environment) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

slide (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

stoc- (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

style (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

\tableofcontents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

template (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

text- (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

thebibliography (environment) . . . . . 17

thenote (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

theslide (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

\title ........................... 9

title- (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

toc (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

toc- (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

tocfrsep (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

tochlcolor (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

tochltcolor (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

tocsecindent (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

tocsecm (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

tocsecsep (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

tocsection (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

tocslideindent (option) . . . . . . . . . . . 32

tocslidesep (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

toctcolor (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

topsep (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

trans (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

\twocolumn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

type (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12,15

\usevalue ....................... 20

verbatim (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

widesectemp (option) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

Powerdot.dvi Powerdot Manual

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