10
$\begingroup$

I have just created a presentation using beamer, and I want the "one" command at the top of the file that creates a printable version. It is true that I can recompile having searched for all the \pause commands and percent them out, but I remember there is an elegant way of doing this.

For the record, I am using the Singapore style, and the talk will not be of much interest to mathematicians.

(This has now been closed as "off-topic" with one of the reasons being the existence of TeX-SX. People interested in this question should therefore consider the question Is there a nice way to compile a beamer presentation without the pauses? on the TeX-SX site.)

Improve this question
$\endgroup$
5
  • 1
    $\begingroup$ btw -- I removed the "soft-question" tag, which we'll try to reserve in future for particularly squishy questions, not just to indicate "doesn't-contain-hard-maths". $\endgroup$ Commented Nov 18, 2009 at 2:55
  • $\begingroup$ See also mathoverflow.net/questions/5937/beamer-hints-and-tips $\endgroup$ Commented Nov 18, 2009 at 16:41
  • $\begingroup$ @Scott: I hadn't noticed the date. I'll remove my comment. $\endgroup$ Commented Nov 20, 2012 at 11:51
  • $\begingroup$ How about we close this question as 'no longer relevant', seeing as now we have TeX.SX? $\endgroup$ Commented Jun 6, 2013 at 2:59
  • $\begingroup$ As it's now been closed, I've added a link to the "duplicate" question on TeX-SX so that people coming here can get the best help. $\endgroup$ Commented Jun 6, 2013 at 9:42

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
10
$\begingroup$

The first answer is the basic correct answer, but there are variants.

  1. Don't change the background colour (waste of ink), rather use pgfpages to put a border around each frame (this isn't one of the standard page-type declarations, but it isn't hard and I can make mine available if anyone wants it).

  2. It's possible to change the type of the output (between beamer, handout, trans, or article) without modifying the file. The trick is to put the main document in one file, say geometry.tex but without the documentclass declaration. Then you create a new file for each type with just the documentclass declaration. For example, geometry.beamer.tex could contain:

    \documentclass[12pt,t,xcolor=dvipsnames,ignorenonframetext]{beamer} \input{geometry.tex}

    whilst geometry.handout.tex might contain

    \documentclass[12pt,xcolor=dvipsname,ignorenonframetext,handout,% notes=only% ]{beamer} \input{geometry.tex}

    and geometry.article.tex might be

    \documentclass[a4paper,10pt]{article} \usepackage[envcountsect]{beamerarticle} \setjobnamebeamerversion{geometry.beamer} \input{geometry.tex}

    Not only does this make sure that you are always compiling the correct version of the document, it also means that if you use a version control system then it doesn't keep complaining about you modifying the file just because you change the output type.

  3. If you are strong in the ways of beamer and TeX, you can go one step further. I use beamer for lectures which means that one single file contains the beamer versions and the handout versions of nearly 30 lectures. To produce a given version of a given lecture, I need to have a way of telling TeX what I want. I could have 60 separate files all with variations on the above, but I've found a simpler way is to have TeX examine the jobname to determine this. Then I just have to have 60 symlinks to the main file (and I can create all 60 symlinks with a single zsh command). That is, lecture.beamer.2009-11-19.tex is a symlink to lectures.tex and when I run LaTeX on it then I get tomorrow's lecture in beamer format (well, I would if I'd written it yet). Again, I'd be happy to share the code for this if anyone's interested.

Addendum 2012-11-13 Unsurprisingly, an early question on TeX-SX was essentially exactly this one. Also unsurprisingly, I answered there as well and as that place is more suited to TeX answers than this one I incorporated this answer there. That answer can be found at https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/1426/86 which also contains links to my code for the above.

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$
9
  • $\begingroup$ Sorry, to bring back this old answer, but you say here that you'd be happy to share the code to make a border around the frames and to let TeX decide which version to use based on the jobname. I would be glad to make you happy. ;-) $\endgroup$ Commented Nov 13, 2012 at 8:56
  • $\begingroup$ nvcleemp See edit: if you follow the links you'll end up at the code. $\endgroup$ Commented Nov 13, 2012 at 17:20
  • $\begingroup$ The idea of the 60 symlinks hurts me a little! :-) Why not simply have a zsh script which invokes latex after defining a command, something like pdflatex \def\printonly{2009-11-19}\input{the-big-file.tex} (and probably munging -jobname so as to get distinct output files) $\endgroup$ Commented Nov 13, 2012 at 19:10
  • $\begingroup$ (one could do it all at once, just saying pdflatex -jobname lecture-2009-11-19 lectures.tex and have the file look at the jobname directly to select the lectura, instead of using a separate command.) $\endgroup$ Commented Nov 13, 2012 at 19:15
  • 2
    $\begingroup$ In an answer A S says this "I know this is old, but generally everything Andrew Stacey has worked on goes smoothly. This one gave me fits today, so I just wanted to comment (and don't know how commenting works) that this answer requires \usepackage{pgfpages} even though that isn't stated anywhere... Might be worth stating?" I thought you might not notice otherwise, thus this comment. $\endgroup$ Commented Jun 5, 2013 at 23:59
16
$\begingroup$ 
\documentclass[handout]{beamer}

achieves what you want. I also write

\mode<handout>{ \usetheme{default} \setbeamercolor{background canvas}{bg=black!5} \pgfpagesuselayout{4 on 1}[letterpaper,landscape,border shrink=2.5mm] }

which in particular gives you 4 slides per page, and some nicer formatting (shaded backgrounds, for example).

You can also use

\documentclass[trans]{beamer}

which disables all the uncovering, but otherwise leaves things very much like in usual beamer mode.

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$

Start asking to get answers

Find the answer to your question by asking.

Ask question

Explore related questions

See similar questions with these tags.