For the moment, the :BEAMER_COL: property of a heading is exported as a \textwidth argument to the column environment of beamer like:
--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8--- \begin{columns} \begin{column}{0.5\textwidth} \end{column} \end{columns} --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8--- That's fine for a standard beamer file but I'm also using the beamer export backend to produce some TeX files using my personal class with the beamerarticle package. My class uses a 2 column setup for wich the \textwidth spans the two columns. The right length should be \columnwidth, as in: --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8--- \begin{columns} \begin{column}{0.5\columnwidth} \end{column} \end{columns} --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8--- I don't think there would be any inconvenients to changing \textwidth to \columnwidth for regular beamer files (it's fine with my beamer files so far). Julien.