Re: Exporting a presentation to both slides and handouts?

[Alan Schmitt <alan.schmitt@polytechnique.org>]

On 15 mars 2012, at 14:26, John Hendy wrote:

> So are you just looking for something to automate this? It seems that
> the generation of the beamer slides themselves are the hard part and,
> as you say, it would be pretty easy to tweak the resultant .tex file
> to give you handouts. Would that work?

Yes, this is what I'm currently doing. More precisely, I
- copy the tex file to another name
- edit the prelude

> You can add LaTeX class options to org-mode, and so you could export
> once for the beamer presentation and then export again with the
> handout class option added?
> 
> #+latex_class_options: [handout]
> 
> which produces:
> 
> \documentclass[handout]{beamer}
> 
> in the resultant file.

Yes. When I don't want it anymore, I can remove it. But I'd rather keep it for next time. Is there a way to comment out a local setup line? (Add an extra '#' at the beginning?)

> I haven't made handouts before, but this email got me interested. It
> seems that all this option does is "flatten" the transitions and
> overlays and whatnot? From there it seems one still needs to do
> something to the file to layout the handouts n-up on a page.

Yes, what I'm doing is this (using a package described here http://www.guidodiepen.nl/2009/07/creating-latex-beamer-handouts-with-notes/):

#+LaTeX_HEADER: \usepackage{handoutWithNotes}
#+LaTeX_HEADER: \pgfpagesuselayout{3 on 1 with notes}[a4paper,border shrink=5mm]
#+LaTeX_HEADER: \renewcommand\pgfsetupphysicalpagesizes{%
#+LaTeX_HEADER:     \pdfpagewidth\pgfphysicalwidth\pdfpageheight\pgfphysicalheight%
#+LaTeX_HEADER: }

(The last 3 lines are for xelatex compatibility.)


> Just use a new document to layout the handouts how you want? I also
> stumbled upon pdfjam, which looks like it aims to accomplish this step
> more easily: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/statistics/staff/academic-research/firth/software/pdfjam
> 
> They have this example:
> ---
> A useful application of pdfjam is for producing a handout from a file
> of presentation slides. For slides made with the standard 4:3 aspect
> ratio a nice 6-up handout on A4 paper can be made by
> 
>  pdfjam --nup 2x3 --frame true --noautoscale false --delta "0.2cm 0.3cm" \
>         --scale 0.95 myslides.pdf --outfile myhandout.pdf
> ---

Thanks for the suggestion. I could use that as well indeed.

Alan