[powerdot] Some suggestions
- From: Murali Krishnan Ganapathy <gmkrishn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: powerdot@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 07 Jun 2006 21:36:35 -0500
Hi,
I know I have been bugging you guys for the last few days. Special
thanks to Christopher Ellison for coming up with a great hack. Now that
my talk is over, I thought it will be a good idea to list areas where
powerdot could be improved. I have put my suggestions into three
categories, those I think should go into powerdot, those which should be
at the level of styles and the third at yet another level (possibly
should do as a separate style file).
Powerdot core
---------------
* Support for adding hyperlinks to (i.e. just declare appropriate
hypertargets)
- previous/next slide,
- first/last overlay in current slide
- first/last slide in current section
- prev/next section
I know this is being worked on, but I am putting it here just for
posterity.
* Some rudimentary support to add navigation panel?
- not clear if powerdot should recognize the concept of a navigation
panel or just think of it as a left/right/center footer and let the
styles deals with it.
* inset content
- \inset[location,size]{material} will typset material in a specified
box at a specified location (e.g. top right 2cm x 3cm). All the
remaining material should flow around this box. I had to resort to using
a \twocolumn like this
\twocolumn[lcolwidth=3cm,rcolwidth=whatever]{inset material}{some of
the remaining material}
rest of remaining material
This required some trial and error work to ensure that the user
doesn't realize that the non-inset material is split into two. Of
course, I do not know what havoc this can create with \onslide and
similar macros.
* Multiple lists in a page, issue/feature
If I have two lists in a slide, like this
\begin{itemize}[type=1]
\item Line 1\pause
\item Line 2
\end{itemize}
\pause
\begin{itemize}[type=1]
\item Line 3\pause
\item Line 4
\end{itemize}
Then the second list appears in the inactive color (for the first
overlay, then disappears, then reappears in the third overlay). I think
that due to the second pause the second list should not appear in the
first overlay at all. In case this is a feature, should be explicitly
mentioned in the documentation
* Interaction between \pause and \onslide: When I use both \pause and
\onslide (not with \onslide*) I dont see what I expect. Replacing \pause
with \onslide{num-}{rest of slide}, gives what I expect. I dont have an
example now, but will try to generate one. If this is a feature, should
be mentioned in the documentation.
Powerdot style
----------------
* Support for a navigation panel
Powerdot utils
---------------
Some macros which if defined will make things a lot simpler for users.
Essentially there are Freq Used Macros and should be independent of the
style used. So they should probably go into a separate style file
(pdutils.sty?).
-- \alert{#1} ---> \textcolor{red}{#1} --- red to be replaced with one
pdcolors?
-- equation environments seem to be leaving too much space around them.
Doesn't seem to be the case always. I haven't figured out the cause.
-- Versions of theorem, lemma, corollary ,etc. environments which look
nice like
http://tug.org/TeXnik/mainFAQ.cgi?file=layouts/examples#example0
as Herbert suggested. I used that template to create my own
\pdtheorem, pdlemma, etc. environments and also ensured that they
all use the same counter but counter value never gets displayed
(In a presentation nobody remembers theorem 5, they remember "Main
Theorem","Sylow's Theorem" etc...)
Ofcourse, my version has still some spacing issues (sometimes I
need to add \vspace{-0.5cm} after use of environment and sometimes not)
-- An enumerate environment which uses "picture" like numbers
pdenumerate -->
\begin{enumerate}[label={\ding{\value*}},start=202,#1]....\end{enumerate}
or may be it might be a good idea to add a "itemstyle" option to the
enumerate command (orthogonal to the current type option) which can be
used to store away certain oft used argument combinations to enumerate)
and let the powerdot styles define these "itemstyles".
-- Any other frequently used macros when using powerdot.
This is more related to ps-tricks
-- I would love to have a macro like \pgfdeclareimage and \pgfuseimage,
so that when I include a JPG file in 20 overlays, I see only one copy of
it in the PDF file. Since powerdot is going dvi-> ps -> pdf, I cannot
\pgfdelcareimage and \pgfuseimage constructs with "JPG" files (since
they are only used for direct pdf output).
+ I know there is a solution for this in the pstricks world. some
wrapper which ensures that the JPG stays compressed in the PS file
+ Some other trick to display the picture once save the result
somewhere and keep reusing the saved version
Both these currently require some non-trivial work for the normal
latex user (editing the postscript code...)
If these could be put into a macro so that as far as the user is
concerned, he just needs a "declareimage" and "useimage" macros, it
would be great.
If such a solution already exists, my apologies.
All in all, I think powerdot is a great package and my talk audience
were impressed with the fact that I went back 15 slides using one click
(as opposed to 15 LeftArrow in powerpoint). I am looking forward to
using powerdot in most (if not all) my future talks.
- Murali
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