Beamer is a

LaTeX Latex is an emulsion (stable dispersion) of polymer microparticles in water. Latexes are found in nature, but synthetic latexes are common as well. In nature, latex is found as a milky fluid found in 10% of all flowering plants (angiosperms ...

document class for creating presentation slides, with a wide range of templates and a set of features for making slideshow effects. It supports pdfLaTeX,

dvips dvips is a computer program that converts the Device Independent file format (DVI) output of TeX typography into a printable or otherwise presentable form. was written by Tomas Rokicki to produce printable PostScript files from DVI input, and ...

, LuaLaTeX and

XeLaTeX XeTeX ( or ; see also Pronouncing and writing "TeX") is a TeX typesetting engine using Unicode and supporting modern font technologies such as OpenType, Graphite and Apple Advanced Typography (AAT). It was originally written by Jonathan Kew ...

. The name is taken from the German word "'' Beamer''" as a

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for "

video projector A video projector is an image projector that receives a video signalling (telecommunication), signal and projects the corresponding image on a projection screen using a lens (optics), lens system. Video projectors use a very bright ultra-high-per ...

Method

The Beamer class is not the first

class for creating presentations, and like many of its predecessors (such as slides, seminar, prosper, powerdot), it has special syntax for defining "slides" (known in Beamer as "frames"). Slides can be built up on-screen in stages as if by revealing text that was previously hidden or covered. This is handled with

PDF Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...

output by creating successive pages that preserve the layout but add new elements, so that advancing to the next page in the PDF file appears to add something to the displayed page, when in fact it has merely redrawn the page. The list of features supported by Beamer is quite long. The most important features, according to the user guide are: * Beamer can be used with pdfLaTeX, LaTeX+dvips, LuaLaTeX and

. LaTeX+

dvipdfm The device independent file format (DVI) is the output file format of the TeX typesetting program, designed by David R. Fuchs and implemented by Donald E. Knuth in 1982. Unlike the TeX markup files used to generate them, DVI files are not inten ...

isn’t supported. * The standard commands of LaTeX still work. A ''\tableofcontents'' will still create a table of contents, ''\section'' is still used to create structure, and ''itemize'' still creates a list. * Overlays and dynamic effects can be easily created. * The appearance of presentations can be modified using themes. * The layout, the colors, and the fonts used in a presentation can easily be changed globally, while preserving control over the most minute detail. * A special style file allows for the use the LaTeX source of a presentation directly in other

classes such as article or book. This makes it easy to create presentations out of lecture notes or lecture notes out of presentations. * The final output is typically a

file, making it highly portable and worry-free, in the sense that a given presentation will always look the same no matter the machine it is opened on. Source code for Beamer presentations, like any other LaTeX file, can be created using any text editor, but there is specific support for Beamer syntax in

AUCTeX AUCTeX is an extensible package for writing and formatting TeX files in Emacs and XEmacs. AUCTeX provides syntax highlighting, smart indentation and formatting, previews of mathematics and other elements directly in the editing buffer, smart fold ...

and

LyX LyX (styled as ; pronounced ) (Based on 3 developers, they say it can be pronounced "Licks", "Lucks" and "Leeks") is an open source, graphical user interface document processor based on the LaTeX typesetting system. Unlike most word processors, ...

. Beamer supports syntax of other LaTeX presentation packages, including

Prosper {{wiktionary, prosper Prosper may refer to: __NOTOC__ Places in the United States * Prosper, Minnesota, an unincorporated community * Prosper, North Dakota, an unincorporated community * Prosper, Oregon, an unincorporated community * Prosper, Texa ...

, Powerdot and Foils, by using compatibility packages.

Output options

Beamer provides the ability to make "handouts", which is a version of the output suitable for printing without the dynamic features, so that the printed version of a slide shows the final version that will appear during the presentation. For actually putting more than one frame on the paper, the pgfpages package is to be used. An "article" version is also available, rendered on standard sized paper (like A4 or letter), with frame titles used as paragraph titles, no special slide layout/colors, keeping the sectioning. This version is suitable for lecture notes or for having a single source file for an article and the slides for the talk about this article.

Dependencies

Beamer depends on the PGF and xcolor packages for some of its features.

References

External links

Beamer home page

beamerposter – a Beamer extension for scientific conference posters in DIN-A0 size or bigger

Beamer Theme Matrix

wiki2beamer: Tool to create Beamer presentations from a wiki-like syntax
* Dohmen, Klaus (2010).
Dual Screen Presentations with the LaTeX Beamer Class under X
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The PracTeX Journal

Beamer2Thesis

BeamerikZ - A Latex class for creating TikZ based Beamer presentations

Tutorials

Introduction to Beamer – How to make a presentationBeamer Presentations: A 5-Part Tutorial for Beginners (Overleaf)

Using beamer.cls: "An intentionally incomplete guide" from LaTeX for Logicians

Beamer by Example from PracTEX Journal, many examples of both TeX source and formatted output
* Introduction to Beamer on Wikibooks
A presentation using the LaTeX Beamer class (short guide – samples)
{{LaTeX navbox Free presentation software Free TeX software Presentation software TeX SourceForge projects