My simple LaTeX slide class

I sometimes get asked how I produce my slides with LaTeX. So I have collected here a few notes on the subject.

My mkslides macros and the associated scripts are really a personal practical hack. This setup was never intended to be a released and supported product for other people, therefore there is no documentation beyond this page and the files listed here. Use at your own risk.

Relevant files

These are currently only available to Computer Laboratory members:

• Macro package for formatting slides:
  /home/mgk25/w/texmf/tex/mgk25/mkslides.sty
• Macro package for formatting exercise model answers:
  /home/mgk25/w/texmf/tex/mgk25/mkanswers.sty
• Shell script for converting resulting DVI to PDF:
  /home/mgk25/w/scripts/dvislides
• Shell script for displaying slides DVI:
  /home/mgk25/w/scripts/xdvis
• Example slide source code:
  /home/mgk25/w/teaching/{unixtools,dsp,security1}/{slides.tex,Makefile}

Example output

• Digital Signal Processing: slides (2up, 4up)

Background

The basic idea behind mkslides is to simply use the familiar LaTeX "article" class to format slides. However, the standard font sizes in "article" are too small for formatting slides. So I simply set the page dimensions to 140 x 105 mm, which is the largest 4:3 rectangle that fits into the ISO A6 paper size. I then magnify the result by a factor of two to 280 x 210 mm, which nicely fits onto both an A4 slide and a US Letter slide, and still has the same 4:3 aspect ratio that most computer displays and almost all data projectors have.

So to use the mkslides package, you will have to use the little shell script "dvislides" in order to convert the DVI file into a PDF file. This script takes care of the appropriate cropping and magnification. The script is also able to produce A4 PDF files that contain two or four slides per page, which is how I produce my handouts.

Macros

Being a lazy typist, I prefer my macros to be short. Therefore mkslides defines some HTML-inspired macros for headings and bullet lists:

• \h{first-level heading}
• \hh{second-level heading}
• \ul starts an unnumbered list
• \li starts a list item
• \ule ends an unnumbered list

Slides can be separated by either \nextslide or the normal \pagebreak. The former attempts to center the slide content somewhat vertically.

For footnote-style side remarks in a smaller font, the \begin{rem} ... \end{rem} environment is available. The macro version \remark{...} is slightly shorter to type, but does not permit multi-paragraph content.

Other details

• I normally use a sans-serif font (with \sffamily), which I find much nicer and more readable on slides than the very thin Computer Modern Roman.
• On some slides, I use the multicol package to get a double-column layout.
• I produce my diagrams with xfig, which provides with the pstex_t export format an elegant and convenient way to include LaTeX math mode text into graphics.
• For data plots, I use Matlab, which is a bit of a love/hate relationship. Some of my students prefer R or gnuplot, both of which can also be used to produce high-quality results.
• Mkslides contains a \begin{exercise} ... \end{exercise} macro for including numbered exercises. The corresponding model answer can be included into the source text of the slides using an immediately following \begin{answer} ... \end{answer} section. Such answers remain invisible on the slides/handouts formatted with mkslides. However, a simple sed script (see the example Makefile for details) can convert the LaTeX source into one that formats using the mkanswers class a separate model-answer sheet for course supervisors.

Alternatives

I wrote the macros above before the now widely used beamer class became available. Their main advantage to me is their simplicity, brevity and that I know how to modify them. So far, I have too little personal experience with the beamer class to comment on its relative merits.

With regard to producing graphics, my research students assure me that PGF and TikZ and Inkscape have become worthwhile alternatives for new projects.

Markus Kuhn

created 2006-09-28 – last modified 2006-09-28 – http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/mkslides/