Writing Presentations¶

This page describes how to use the LSST-beamer class to make LSST-style presentations with beamer.

Quick start¶

You can use beamer to make LSST-flavoured talks by adding something like:

\usepackage[fonts=false]{LSST-beamer}

to your beamer presentation. You need the fonts=false if you want to use pdflatex; if you’re happy with xelatex it may be omitted.

Alternate themes¶

The backgrounds for the title and main pages are found in the directory LSST-themes/. Two files are required:

LSSTcover.pdf : background for cover slide
LSSTmain.pdf : background for all non-cover slides

(jpg files are also allowed, e.g. LSSTcover.jpg)

Default may be a symbolic link to choose the proper background, or you may specify a different directory with the backgroundTheme option to the LSST-beamer package, e.g.

\usepackage[backgroundTheme=LSST2016]{LSST-beamer}

You may use footline=XXX to put text in the footer, generally with the default “generic” backgroundTheme, as many backgroundThemes already have something there. The text may use {} to quote spaces; see LSST 2016-style Beamer presentation example for an example.

You may use \position as an alias for \institute (e.g. \position{DM Boss}) (but only if you declare it after importing the LSST-beamer package).

Another common problem is DESC; they use a different layout for their cover slides — see DESC-style Beamer presentation example.

Options reference¶

The full set of options that the LSST-beamer package accepts are:

quiet: Suppress some pdf warnings.
descTheme: Fiddle beamer to use DESC templates.
colorlinks: Hyperref’s colorlinks, but set colours for beamer (default: false).
theme: Beamer theme to use (default: Boadilla).
colortheme: Beamer colour theme (default: seahorse); takes precedence over foreground.
foreground: Foreground color (RGB triplet e.g. {0.1, 0, 0.2}).
titleColor: Name of colour for title (e.g. white).
titleVoffset: Vertical offset of start of title in units of \textheight (default: 0.2).
backgroundTheme: Location of LSST{cover,main}.pdf (a directory relative to LSST-themes; default: default). No backgrounds are inserted if backgroundTheme is empty.
footline: Text to put in the footer (generally with backgroundTheme=generic).
centerFrameTitle: Centre frame titles (default: true).
noOutline: Don’t include an outline before each section (BEAMER_FRAME_LEVEL: 2).
serif: Use serif font theme.
fonts: Allow user to set fonts using using xelatex’s font management.
mainFont: The main font (default: Tex Gyre Pagella; only takes effect if fonts=true).
mainFontScale: Scaling for main font (default: 1; only takes effect if fonts=true).
sansFont: The sans font (default: Open Sans; only takes effect if fonts=true).
sansFontScale: Scaling for sans font (default: 1; only takes effect if fonts=true).
monoFont: The mono font (default: Inconsolata; only takes effect if fonts=true).
monoFontScale: Scaling for mono font (default: 1; only takes effect if fonts=true).