This is fifth in a series on Emacs and org-mode.
This blog post was generated from an org-mode source and is available as: a blog page, slides (PDF format), and a PDF document.
org-mode isn’t just an agenda-making program. It can also export to lots of formats: LaTeX, PDF, Beamer, iCalendar (agendas), HTML, Markdown, ODT, plain text, man pages, and more complicated formats such as a set of web pages.
This isn’t just some afterthought either; it’s a core part of the system and integrates very well.
One file can be source code, automatically-generated output, task list, documentation, and presentation, all at once.
Some use org-mode as their preferred markup format, even for things like LaTeX documents. The org-mode manual has an extensive section on exporting.
From any org-mode document, just hit C-c C-e. From there will come
up a menu, letting you choose various export formats and options.
These are generally single-key options so it’s easy to set and
execute. For instance, to export a document to a PDF, use
C-c C-e l p or for HTML export, C-c C-e h h.
There are lots of settings available for all of these export options; see the manual. It is, in fact, quite possible to use LaTeX-format equations in both LaTeX and HTML modes, to insert arbitrary preambles and settings for different modes, etc.
ELPA containts many addition exporters for org-mode as well. Check there for details.
Beamer is a LaTeX environment for making presentations. Its features include:
- Automated generating of structural elements in the presentation (see, for example, the Marburg theme). This provides a visual reference for the audience of where they are in the presentation.
- Strong help for structuring the presentation
- Themes
- Full LaTeX available
org-mode has a lot of benefits for working with Beamer. Among them:
- org-mode’s very easy and strong support for visualizing and changing the structure makes it very quick to reorganize your material.
- Combined with org-babel, live source code (with syntax highlighting) and results can be embedded.
- The syntax is often easier to work with.
I have completely replaced my usage of LibreOffice/Powerpoint/GoogleDocs with org-mode and beamer. It is, in fact, rather frustrating when I have to use one of those tools, as they are nowhere near as strong as org-mode for visualizing a presentation structure.
org-mode’s Beamer export will convert sections of your document
(defined by headings) into slides. The question, of course, is:
which sections? This is governed by the H export setting
(org-export-headline-levels).
There are many ways to go, which suit people. I like to have my presentation like this:
#+OPTIONS: H:2
#+BEAMER_HEADER: \AtBeginSection{\frame{\sectionpage}}
This gives a standalone section slide for each major topic, to
highlight major transitions, and then takes the level 2 (two
asterisks) headings to set the slide. Many Beamer themes expect a
third level of indirection, so you would set H:3 for them.
You can configure many Beamer and LaTeX settings in your document by inserting lines at the top of your org file. This document, for instance, defines:
#+TITLE: Documents and presentations with org-mode
#+AUTHOR: John Goerzen
#+BEAMER_HEADER: \institute{The Changelog}
#+PROPERTY: comments yes
#+PROPERTY: header-args :exports both :eval never-export
#+OPTIONS: H:2
#+BEAMER_THEME: CambridgeUS
#+BEAMER_COLOR_THEME: default
I like to change some colors, bullet formatting, and the like. I round out my document with:
# We can't just +BEAMER_INNER_THEME: default because that picks the theme default.
# Override per https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/11168/change-bullet-style-formatting-in-beamer
#+BEAMER_INNER_THEME: default
#+LaTeX_CLASS_OPTIONS: [aspectratio=169]
#+BEAMER_HEADER: \definecolor{links}{HTML}{0000A0}
#+BEAMER_HEADER: \hypersetup{colorlinks=,linkcolor=,urlcolor=links}
#+BEAMER_HEADER: \setbeamertemplate{itemize items}[default]
#+BEAMER_HEADER: \setbeamertemplate{enumerate items}[default]
#+BEAMER_HEADER: \setbeamertemplate{items}[default]
#+BEAMER_HEADER: \setbeamercolor*{local structure}{fg=darkred}
#+BEAMER_HEADER: \setbeamercolor{section in toc}{fg=darkred}
#+BEAMER_HEADER: \setlength{\parskip}{\smallskipamount}
Here, aspectratio=169 sets a
16:9 aspect ratio, and the remaining are standard LaTeX/Beamer
configuration bits.
Sometimes you’ve got some really large code examples and you might prefer to just shrink the slide to fit.
Just type C-c C-x p, set the BEAMER_opt property to shrink=15.
(Or a larger value of shrink). The previous slide uses this here.
Here’s the end result:
With the org-tree-slide package, you can display your slideshow from
right within Emacs. Just run M-x org-tree-slide-mode. Then, use
C-> and C-< to move between slides.
You might find C-c C-x C-v (which is org-toggle-inline-images)
helpful to cause the system to display embedded images.
There are a lot of ways to export org-mode presentations to HTML, with various levels of JavaScript integration. See the non-beamer presentations section of the org-mode wiki for details.
- orgmode.org beamer tutorial
- LaTeX wiki
- Generating section title slides
- Shrinking content to fit on slide
- A great resource: refcard-org-beamer
- See its Github repo
- Make sure to check out both the PDF and the .org file
- A nice Theme matrix
mu4e for email!