Re: presentation module

[Yue Wang <yuleopen@gmail.com>]

On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 2:01 PM, Marcin Borkowski
<mbork@atos.wmid.amu.edu.pl> wrote:
> Dnia Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 10:21:30AM +0800, Yue Wang napisa&#322;(a):
>> On Thu, Apr 30, 2009 at 12:56 AM, Aditya Mahajan <adityam@umich.edu> wrote:
>> > On Thu, 30 Apr 2009, Yue Wang wrote:
>> >
>> >> Hi,
>> >>
>> >> you can find that on http://modules.contextgarden.net/
>> >>
>> >> but anyway, you won't know how easy it is to place figure/text
>> >> wherever you want in Keynote.
>> >> In ConTeXt, you cannot achieve that.
>> >
>> > Sure you can. Use a background layer, and then you can place the text
>> > whereever you want. Not as easy as in Keynote or powerpoint, but it can be
>> > done.
>>
>>
>> achieve the "easiness" I mean.
>> positioning/adjusting graphics/text using a mouse is much easier than
>> do that with keyboard,
>> and one should compile/adjust xs and ys many times in order to get the
>> right result.
>
> Well, using the keyboard and not the mouse is IMHO one of the TeX (and
> LateX, and ConTeXt, and METAPOST, and METAFUN, and tikz) advantages: I
> may have repeatable (and uniform throughout the document) results
> without having to put a (physical) ruler onto my monitor;)...
>
> My experience shows that the best way to prepare a complicated document,
> and especially one containing complicated mathematics/graphics/tables,
> is to:
> 1. think about it
> 2. sketch it on a piece of paper
> 3. think a bit more
> 4. write down the important coordinates etc.
> 5. type into the computer what I have done in part 4.
>
> This way you don't really have to adjust it too many times (maybe twice
> or thrice).



Please design a few fancy slides in both Powerpoint/Keynote and TeX,
and compare the efforts you should take.
Good exercises to follow are Steve Jobs' WWDC presentations and Al
Gore's An Inconvenient Truth.
After doing so, you can come back and tell us that only twice
re-compilation are needed to design a good presentation.

>
>> not to say how to create beautiful 2d/3d charts and tables,
>> make simple drawings,
>
> metafun or tikz
>

there is an old saying in China: 站着说话不腰疼.
(you won't hurt your hip when you stand still while speaking)


>> get fancy templates,
>> apply some advanced features to graphics/texts (like mirror, or
>> believable shade)
>> Well, I know in theory everything above is doable using TeX,
>> but extra amount of work should be done, and the ConTeXt approach
>> (using metafun?) quite unproductive.
>
> As I said: the bulk of the work when preparing a good document is
> *thinking* (and writing the *text*).  Even two or three hours of typing
> don't really make a difference, especially if you get nicer results than
> when using mouse (each picture etc. in slightly different position
> and/or size...)

It is funny to say ConTeXt results will be better... Please try the
grid positioning feature in Keynote or InDesign CS4.
but even the picture are in slightly different position/size, the
viewer wont notice that.

As a contrast, trying again and again for tuning/positioning/compiling
TeX document (and lookup TeX commands on manual) will distract me from
real "thinking"

>
>> So unless someone develop a good GUI frontend for TeX,
>> using TeX for unstructured documents (like presentation slides) is
>> always not a good idea.
>
> This might be debatable, but I would risk a following statement: if you
> consider your presentation slides "unstructured", maybe it's time to
> devote more thinking to it...
>



I admit it is easy to create bulletpoint presentations in ConTeXt
(even easier than Keynote and PowerPoint, \item will do all the
stuffs)
But bear in mind structured presentation handout \neq structured
presentation slides
As far as I know, for most time, the presentation handout should be
structured (point 1, point 2, point3.1, point 3.2 ...) so the speaker
can cover the topic throughly.
However, a structured presentation slide (e.g., bulletpoint) is too
monotonous->dull to put the audience to sleep easily.
Only by careful reorganization of materials can the speaker makes an
awesome presentation.
That's why Steve Job's presentations are all unstructured, but the
audience know clearly what the key points are, and excited->scream
when watching his presentation.
TeX and XML are good for creating structured stuffs (books, journal
papers) where only item point/chapter/float/ref are needed, but
concerning unstructured stuffs like presentation slides, it will be
difficult to do that in just a few \items or \sections.


> But a GUI would be nice in fact, especially for tikz.  I agree that
> in some cases it would be faster to use it than to type everything.
>
> Regards
>
> --
> Marcin Borkowski (http://mbork.pl)
>
> - Why vim users don't use the ESC key?
> - It's too far on the keyboard.  It's faster to type ctrl-[.
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>
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