Creating Supporting Material

21 Creating Handouts and Lecture Notes

During a presentation it is very much desirable that the audience has a handout or even lecture notes available to it. A handout allows everyone in the audience to individually go back to things he or she has not understood.

Always provide handouts as early as possible, preferably weeks before the talk. Do not retain the handout till the end of the talk.

The beamer package offers two different ways of creating special versions of your talk; they are discussed in the following. The first, easy, way is to create a handout version by adding the handout option, which will cause the document to be typeset in handout mode. It will “look like” a presentation, but it can be printed more easily (the overlays are “flattened”). The second, more complicated and more powerful way is to create an independent “article” version of your presentation. This version coexists in your main file.

21.1 Creating Handouts Using the Handout Mode¶

The easiest way of creating a handout for your audience (though not the most desirable one) is to use the handout option. This option works exactly like the trans option.

When printing a handout created this way, you will typically wish to print at least two and possibly four slides on each page. The easiest way of doing so is presumably to use pgfpages as follows:

\usepackage{pgfpages}
\pgfpagesuselayout{2 on 1}[a4paper,border shrink=5mm]

Instead of 2 on 1 you can use 4 on 1 (but then you have to add landscape to the list of options) and you can use, say, letterpaper instead of a4paper.

21.2 Creating Handouts Using the Article Mode¶

In the following, the “article version” of your presentation refers to a normal TeX text typeset using, for example, the document class article or perhaps llncs or a similar document class. This version of the presentation will typically follow different typesetting rules and may even have a different structure. Nevertheless, you may wish to have this version coexist with your presentation in one file and you may wish to share some part of it (like a figure or a formula) with your presentation.

In general, the article version of a talk is better suited as a handout than a handout created using the simple handout mode since it is more economic and can include more in-depth information.

21.2.1 Starting the Article Mode¶

The article mode of a presentation is created by specifying article or book or some other class as the document class instead of beamer and by then loading the package beamerarticle.

The package beamerarticle defines virtually all of beamer’s commands in a way that is sensible for the article mode. Also, overlay specifications can be given to commands like \textbf or \item once beamerarticle has been loaded. Note that, except for \item, these overlay specifications also work: by writing \section<presentation>{Name} you will suppress this section command in the article version. For the exact effects overlay specifications have in article mode, please see the descriptions of the commands to which you wish to apply them.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{beamerarticle}
\begin{document}
\begin{frame}
  \frametitle{A frame title}
  \begin{itemize}
\item<1-> You can use overlay specifications.
\item<2-> This is useful.
  \end{itemize}
\end{frame}
\end{document}

There is one remaining problem: While the article version can easily TeX the whole file, even in the presence of commands like \frame<2>, we do not want the special article text to be inserted into our original beamer presentation. That means, we would like all text between frames to be suppressed. More precisely, we want all text except for commands like \section and so on to be suppressed. This behavior can be enforced by specifying the option ignorenonframetext in the presentation version.

The following example shows a simple usage of the article mode:

\documentclass[a4paper]{article}
\usepackage{beamerarticle}
%%\documentclass[ignorenonframetext,red]{beamer}

\mode<article>{\usepackage{fullpage}}
\mode<presentation>{\usetheme{Berlin}}

%% everyone:
\usepackage[english]{babel}
\usepackage{pgf}

\pgfdeclareimage[height=1cm]{myimage}{filename}

\begin{document}

\section{Introduction}

This is the introduction text. This text is not shown in the
presentation, but will be part of the article.

\begin{frame}
 \begin{figure}
   % In the article, this is a floating figure,
   % In the presentation, this figure is shown in the first frame
   \pgfuseimage{myimage}
 \end{figure}
\end{frame}

This text is once more not shown in the presentation.

\section{Main Part}

While this text is not shown in the presentation, the section command
also applies to the presentation.

We can add a subsection that is only part of the article like this:

\subsection<article>{Article-Only Section}

With some more text.

\begin{frame}
 This text is part both of the article and of the presentation.
 \begin{itemize}
\item This stuff is also shown in both version.
\item This too.
 \only<article>{\item This particular item is only part
     of the article version.}
\item<presentation:only@0> This text is also only part of the article.
 \end{itemize}
\end{frame}
\end{document}

There is one command whose behavior is a bit special in article mode: The line break command \\. Inside frames, this command has no effect in article mode, except if an overlay specification is present. Then it has the normal effect dictated by the specification. The reason for this behavior is that you will typically inserts lots of \\ commands in a presentation in order to get control over all line breaks. These line breaks are mostly superfluous in article mode. If you really want a line break to apply in all versions, say \\<all>. Note that the command \\ is often redefined by certain environments, so it may not always be overlay-specification-aware. In such a case you have to write something like \only<presentation>{\\}.

21.2.2 Workflow¶

The following workflow steps are optional, but they can simplify the creation of the article version.

• • In the main file main.tex, delete the first line, which sets the document class. In case the article version is used as a starting point, also remove \usepackage{beamerarticle}.

• • Create a file named, say, main.beamer.tex with the following content:

  \documentclass[ignorenonframetext]{beamer}
  \input{main.tex}
  

• • Create an extra file named, say, main.article.tex with the following content:

  \documentclass{article}
  \usepackage{beamerarticle}
  \setjobnamebeamerversion{main.beamer}
  \input{main.tex}
  

• • You can now run pdflatex or latex on the two files main.beamer.tex and main.article.tex.

The command \setjobnamebeamerversion tells the article version where to find the presentation version. This is necessary if you wish to include slides from the presentation version in an article as figures.

21.2.3 Including Slides from the Presentation Version in the Article Version¶

If you use the package beamerarticle, the \frame command becomes available in article mode. By adjusting the frame template, you can “mimic” the appearance of frames typeset by beamer in your articles. However, sometimes you may wish to insert “the real thing” into the article version, that is, a precise “screenshot” of a slide from the presentation. The commands introduced in the following help you do exactly this.

In order to include a slide from your presentation in your article version, you must do two things: First, you must place a normal LaTeX label on the slide using the \label command. Since this command is overlay-specification-aware, you can also select specific slides of a frame. Also, by adding the option label=⟨name⟩ to a frame, a label ⟨name⟩<⟨slide number⟩> is automatically added to each slide of the frame.

Once you have labeled a slide, you can use the following command in your article version to insert the slide into it:

\article
  \begin{figure}
    \begin{center}
      \includeslide[height=5cm]{slide1}
    \end{center}
    \caption{The first slide (height 5cm). Note the partly covered second item.}
  \end{figure}
  \begin{figure}
    \begin{center}
      \includeslide{slide2}
    \end{center}
    \caption{The second slide (original size). Now the second item is also shown.}
  \end{figure}

The exact effect of passing the option page=⟨page of label name⟩ to the command \pgfimage is explained in the documentation of pgf. In essence, the following happens:

• • For old versions of pdflatex and for any version of latex together with dvips, the pgf package will look for a file named

  ⟨filename⟩.page⟨page of label name⟩.⟨extension⟩

  For each page of your .pdf or .ps file that is to be included in this way, you must create such a file by hand. For example, if the PostScript file of your presentation version is named main.beamer.ps and you wish to include the slides with page numbers 2 and 3, you must create (single page) files main.beamer.page2.ps and main.beamer.page3.ps “by hand” (or using some script). If these files cannot be found, pgf will complain.

• • For new versions of pdflatex, pdflatex also looks for the files according to the above naming scheme. However, if it fails to find them (because you have not produced them), it uses a special mechanism to directly extract the desired page from the presentation file main.beamer.pdf.

21.3 Details on Modes¶

This subsection describes how modes work exactly and how you can use the \mode command to control what part of your text belongs to which mode.

When beamer typesets your text, it is always in one of the following five modes:

• • beamer is the default mode.

• • second is the mode used when a slide for an optional second screen is being typeset.

• • handout is the mode for creating handouts.

• • trans is the mode for creating transparencies.

• • article is the mode when control has been transferred to another class, like article.cls. Note that the mode is also article if control is transferred to, say, book.cls.

In addition to these modes, beamer recognizes the following names for modes sets:

• • all refers to all modes.

• • presentation refers to the first four modes, that is, to all modes except for the article mode.

Depending on the current mode, you may wish to have certain text inserted only in that mode. For example, you might wish a certain frame or a certain table to be left out of your article version. In some situations, you can use the \only command for this purpose. However, the command \mode, which is described in the following, is much more powerful than \only.

The command actually comes in three “flavors,” which only slightly differ in syntax. The first, and simplest, is the version that takes one argument. It behaves essentially the same way as \only.

\mode<article>{Extra detail mentioned only in the article version.}

\mode<beamer| trans>{
 \begin{frame}
   \tableofcontents[currentsection]
 \end{frame}
}

The second flavor of the \mode command takes no argument. “No argument” means that it is not followed by an opening brace, but any other symbol.

\mode<article>

This text is typeset only in |article| mode.
\verb!verbatim text is ok {!

\mode<presentation>{% this text is inserted only in presentation mode
 \begin{frame}
   \tableofcontents[currentsection]
 \end{frame}
}

Here we are back to article mode stuff. This text
is not inserted in presentation mode

\mode<presentation>

This text is only inserted in presentation mode.

The last flavor of the mode command behaves quite differently.

\begin{document}
\mode*

This text is not shown in the presentation.

\begin{frame}
 This text is shown both in article and presentation mode.
\end{frame}

this text is not shown in the presentation again.

\section{This command also has effect in presentation mode}

Back to article stuff again.

\frame<presentation>
{ this frame is shown only in the presentation. }
\end{document}

\documentclass[ignorenonframetext]{beamer}
\begin{document}
This is star mode stuff.

Let's include files:
\mode<all>
\include{a}
\include{b}
\mode*

Back to star mode
\end{document}

\mode*
\section{First section}
Extra text in article version.
\begin{frame}
 Some text.
\end{frame}
\mode<all>