[powerdot] Re: onslide and minipage

  • From: Hendri Adriaens <spotje@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: powerdot@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Tue, 25 Oct 2005 12:09:26 +0200

> The problem does not have anything to do with minipage. I tried this
> example using \twocolumn, like Hendri suggested, and got the same
> behavior.
> It looks like \onslide is NOT so independent of \pause, after all (at
> least as far as the typeset results we get, if not in terms of
> powerdot internals).

Well, it's not so simple ;-) It has to do with postscript layers and
more stuff, see below.

> Clearly the order here is relevant: if you exchange the columns (so
> that the \onslide command appears in your code BEFORE the first
> \pause), then you get the right result. As far as I can tell,
> anything that appears in the code after a number of \pause's is only
> typeset *at least* after that many overlays.
> My guess (not knowing anything about how powerdot is coded) is that
> the \onslide command is not even executed for first few overlays as
> powerdot probably just
> ignores everything after the first \pause for the first overlay, and
> so on. Is that right, Hendri?

Nope, sorry. See even further below.

> In the very small example below, "Stuff" should appear starting with
> the second overlay, but only appears in the fourth and fifth because
> (if my guess is right) the \onslide command does not even get to be
> executed until then.
>
> %%%% smal example
> \begin{slide}{}
> A \pause B \pause C \pause D \onslide{2-}{Stuff} \pause E
> \end{slide}
> %%%% end of small example

What happens here is that \pause hides following material on overlay
1. Stuff does appear on overlay 2, but is overruled by an earlier
\pause. In the itemize setting from previous examples, more things
happen internally to be able to connect sequential and nested lists
properly, having again other implications, as we saw. Here
\end{itemize} jumps to overlay 0 (all visible) and hence the
\onslide{2-} gets the chance of indeed displaying as from overlay 2.
This is as expected and by design! In fact, we tell to become visible
at overlay 2, so why shouldn't it do that?

What you probably meant was relative stepping, like \onslide{+1-}.
This is only possible after an \item in a list (as in the docs).

Did this clarify things a bit? BTW, we wrote an article about powerdot
which will appear shortly in MAPS (by NTG) and Tugboat. This also
explains the overlays in postscript etc. If you want some more
information already, you can have a look at the first subsection in
implementation in the source (.dtx).

Best,
-Hendri.

Other related posts: