Beamer (LaTeX)

Beamer is a LaTeX document class for creating slides for presentations. It supports both pdfLaTeX and LaTeX + dvips. The name is taken from the German word "Beamer" as a pseudo-anglicism for "video projector".

Method

The beamer class is not the first LaTeX class for creating presentations, and like many of its predecessors, it has special syntax for defining 'slides' (known in Beamer as 'frames'). Slides can be built up on-screen in stages as if by revealing text that was previously hidden or covered. This is handled with PDF output by creating successive pages that preserve the layout but add new elements, so that advancing to the next page in the PDF file appears to add something to the displayed page, when in fact it has redrawn the page.

Source code for beamer presentations, like any other LaTeX file, can be created using any text editor, but there is specific support for beamer syntax in AUCTeX and LyX.

Beamer supports syntax of other LaTeX presentation packages, including Prosper and Foils, by using compatibility packages.

Output options

Beamer provides the ability to make "handouts", that is a version of the output suitable for printing, without the dynamic features, so that the printed version of a slide shows the final version that will appear during the presentation. For actually putting more than one frame on the paper, the pgfpages package is to be used.

An "article" version is also available, rendered on standard sized paper (like A4 or letter), with frame titles used as paragraph titles, no special slide layout/colors, keeping the sectioning. This version is suitable for lecture notes or for having a single source file for an article and the slides for the talk about this article.

Dependencies

Beamer depends on PGF for some of its features.

See also

• Powerdot – a LaTeX class for making professional-looking presentation slides
• Prosper – a LaTeX class for writing transparencies

Further reading

• Voß, Herbert (2012). Presentations with LaTeX. Berlin: Lehmanns Media. ISBN 9783865414960. 

External links

The Wikibook LaTeX has a page on the topic of: Presentations in LaTeX

• Beamer home page
• beamerposter – a beamer extension for scientific conference posters in DIN-A0 size or bigger
• Till Tantau, Joseph Wright, Vedran Miletić (2015) User's guide – from www.ctan.org
• Beamer Theme Matrix
• wiki2beamer: Tool to create Beamer presentations from a wiki-like syntax
• Dohmen, Klaus (2010) Dual Screen Presentations with the LaTeX Beamer Class under X – from The PracTeX Journal
• Beamer2Thesis

Tutorials

• Introduction to Beamer – How to make a presentation
• Using beamer.cls: "An intentionally incomplete guide" from LaTeX for Logicians
• Beamer by Example from PracTEX Journal, many examples of both TeX source and formatted output
• Introduction to beamer on wikibooks
• A presentation using the LaTeX Beamer class (short guide – samples)