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Manual for version 0.5.1

1. Quick start

Type latex2slides in a terminal. Then choose the following options from the menues:
  • File -> Open. Choose a TeX or LaTeX file to process.
  • Slides -> Make. Ask the program to make the slides.
  • Slides -> Show. The program will run netscape and show you the slides.
Your slides are now stored at: $HOME/.latex2slides/ . If you are not happy with the slides, you can go to Settings -> Configure and change your settings (image resolution, image magnification, etc.). Make your slides again and see if they look better.

2. Invoking latex2slides from the command line

2.1 Synopsis

latex2slides [OPTION] [FILE]

2.2 Description

latex2slides is a simple graphical program that produces a set of HTML/JPEG slides from a LaTeX (or TeX) source FILE. The program first produces a multipage postscript, using latex (or tex ) and dvips. Each postscript page is converted to a JPEG image using ImageMagick's convert. The program then makes one HTML page for each JPEG (or slide), and an index.html page. As a result, each slide in your slide presentation corresponds to one of the postscript pages you would obtain running latex on the LaTeX source.

2.3 Options

-a, --author NAME
set slides author's NAME
-c, --console
run in console, do not open graphic interface
-C, --css CSSFILE
set CSSFILE as the cascading style sheet
-h, --help
display this help and exit
-m, --magnification M
set M as image magnification (default=100)
-O, --orientation OPT
where OPT is one of the following: portrait portrait-upside-down landscape landscape-upside-down
-o, --output DIRECTORY
set output DIRECTORY for slides
-r, --resolution R
set R as postscript resolution (default=95)
-s, --source S
where S is one of the following: autodetect latex tex
-t, --title TITLE
set presentation TITLE
-v, --version
display version information and exit

2.4 Examples

latex2slides
       Open the Graphical User Interface (GUI)

latex2slides --title "A Title Here" file.tex
       Choose given title, select file.tex and open GUI

latex2slides -c --title "A Title Here" file.tex
       Same as above, but run in console instead of opening GUI. 

3. Using the graphical interface

Latex2slides is intended to be an easy to use graphical program. Even though there are several command line options are available (see above), part of the functionality is only available through the Graphical User Interface (GUI). After invoking the program (see previous section), a window (the GUI) will appear on the screen. The following options are available through the menues.

3.1 Menues

  • File
    • Open - Choose a LaTeX or TeX file to make slides from.
    • Open new - Same as above, but also reload user preferred settings from disk.
    • Exit - Quit the program.
  • Slides
    • Make - Actually make the slides, and store them in the output directory. Each set of slides overwrites the previous one.
    • Make one - Same as above, but only make the first slide. Useful when you are exploring different settings for your slides
    • Show - Display the slides using the web browser chosen in Settings (netscape is the default).
  • Settings
    • Configure
      Files and directories
      • Source file type - The program tries to autodetect the file type by default; if it fails, choose LaTeX or TeX here.
      • Output directory - The directory where the slides will be stored.
      • Cascading style sheet - Latex2slides uses a CSS, named style.css. You may want to modify it to customize the look of your presentations. If you do so, you can set here the name and location of your CSS file.
      Slide options
      • Image resolution - Postscript resolution, in pixels per inch. Higher resolution gives nicer but bigger (thus slower to download) slides. This option corresponds to -density in ImageMagick's convert.
      • Image magnification - Adjust the size of the slides' images; magnification=100% leaves the slides unaltered.
      • Presentation title - To appear in the index.html page and in every html page.
      • Presentation author - To appear in the index.html page.
      • First postscript page number - If the first page number in your latex source is different from one, please set this number here.
      • Orientation - Page orientation in the latex source (portrait, landscape, etc.)
      • Image format - JPEG is the default; PNG is excellent, but some web browsers do not support it.
      • Navigation bar position - Choose where to place the navigation bar (top, bottom or both)
      Misc. options
      • Web browser - Choose your favorite web browser (netscape, konqueror, etc.)
      Actions
      • Apply - Use the selected options.
      • Save - Use the selected options, but also save them to disk as user preferred settings . The presentation title is not saved.
      • Reset - Use program defaults for all the options.
      • Cancel - Quit the Configure Dialog without applying any change.
  • Help - Documentation and information about latex2slides.

4. Customizing your slides

You can change the look of your slides in many ways:
  • The index.html produced by latex2slides is really a template. You may want to modify it once you are happy with the slides set.
  • To improve the visual quality of your slides, try different values of Image resolution and Image magnification.
  • Customizing the CSS for the slides, as shown below.

4.1 The Cascading Style Sheet

Part of the look of the slides is controled by a Cascading Style Sheet (CSS). The easiest way to customize it to your needs is:
  • Make your slides as usual
  • Edit the "style.css" file in the output directory, until the slides look as you please.
  • Copy this "style.css" file to a safe place (for instance ~/.style.css) (latex2slides always overwrites the output directory)
  • If you want to use this CSS for all your presentations, choose it as your user preferred CSS in the Configure Dialog (see above).

5. Misc. notes

  • Just in case you want to know what exactly is the program doing, a log of each session is written at $HOME/.latex2slides/latex2slides.log
  • It is always a good idea to have a hard-copy of your talk just in case :-).
  • Using landscape mode is very convenient for a screen based presentation, since most likely you will not have to scroll with the browser when displaying the slides.

6. Bugs and limitations.

The best approach for publishing LaTeX documents in the web is to use a translator from LaTeX to HTML (for the text) + MathML (for the equations). However, as for Mid 2001 MathML is not fully supported by web browsers. Also, LaTeX to HTML translators not always give a nice output when the LaTeX source imports images. This is why a program such as latex2slides makes sense. My recommendation is: only use latex2slides for web publishing when LaTeX to HTML translators fail to do the job. On the other hand, if you want to give a computer-based slide presentation, latex2slides may be fine in most cases.

7. See Also

convert (ImageMagic's) - LaTeX2HTML - TtH (TeX to HTML)
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