On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 10:18:30PM +0100, Pau Amaro-Seoane wrote:
> Hi,
>
> very often I have to give a talk about my work etc... The slides
> contain a lot of math equations, plots and even sometimes some movies.
>
> I was used to latex-beamer to do all this because I want something I
> can edit with vi(m) and it fulfilled all requisites ... and I was used
> to it when I was using linux.
>
> I have switched to OpenBSD since some 1.5 years and I am very happy to
> report here, by the way, that OpenBSD _does_ start X on the projector
> where most linux peecees and macs fail :) BUT -and this is the main
> reason to write now- the pdf slides created with latex-beamer "feel
> heavy"... What I mean is that when using full screen (with xpdf or
> kpdf etc) it takes some 3-4 seconds to change a slide. I don't know
> why... I can provide you with a test talk, so that you udnerstand what
> I mean.
>
> This is very bad when somebody in the public asks a question of plot
> number 2 in slide #3 and you're in slide #55. Sure there are ways to
> overcome the problem, with the progress bar of latex-beamer, for
> instance, but still I don't like it.
>
> I just want to ask here in misc whether somebody has had the same
> problem and what other alternatives there are.
>
yes i've the same problem, i've been using latex-beamer on a slow
machine. To speedup the display, i converted the whole presentation
to pnm images (one image per slide) and then made my presentation
using graphics/qiv port. For instance, to generate the pnm files:
gs -r248 -sDEVICE=pnmraw -sOutputFile=%d.ppm -dTextAlphaBits=4 \
-dGraphicsAlphaBits=4 -dNOPAUSE doc.ps -c quit
for i in ?.ppm; do mv $i 0$i done
then to display them:
qiv -f -i ??.ppm
using space and backspace keys you can switch between slides very
quickly even on a slow machine. Furthermore you can skip 5 slides
using page-up and page-down keys, which is very handy when somebody
asks you to go a particular slide.
hth,
-- Alexandre
