Thursday, August 25, 2011

Getting powerdot to work

Powerdot is a presentation package for LaTeX, much like beamer.

I recently got it up and running on my system and I thought I'll setup a quick guide for it:



  1. Getting Powerdot: The best place to get it from is the CTAN mirror itself from here. Extract it at a place which will be referred to we $POWERDOT
  2. Installing it: These steps pertain to a Linux system. I believe that the system for Windows MikTeX is simpler, involving pointing and clicking. However, for Linux, the process is somewhat more complicated.

Finally, write a simple powerdot_test.tex file:
    \documentclass{powerdot}
    
    \begin{document}
    
    \begin{slide}{Slide 1}
      Contents.
    \end{slide}
    
    \section{Introduction}
    
    \begin{slide}{Slide 2}
      More content.
    \end{slide}
    
    \end{document}
    
    

    Now apparently pdflatex has a few issues with compiling powerdot presentations. Hence, use latex to create the dvi file and then convert it to pdf:
    latex powerdot_test.tex
    dvipdf powerdot_test.dvi
    evince powerdot_test.pdf
    

    That should be it!


    vim-latexsuit users

    If you use vim-latex like me, then there here are a few tips.

    I have set my vim-latexsuit setup such that is produces pdf files by default. You can check your default format by:

    :echo g:Tex_DefaultTargetFormat 
    

    and if it is not dvi, set it to dvi by:

    :let g:Tex_DefaultTargetFormat=dvi
    

    vim-latex will figure out how to compile the file the right way. However, the default viewer for the dvi files is ghostscipt viewer, which is extremely ill-suited for presentations Also, evince opens the dvi files with scaling all wrong. Hence, I do this:

    :let g:Tex_ViewRuleComplete_dvi='dvipdf $*.dvi; evince $*.pdf &'
    

    which converts the dvi file to pdf before passing it to evince.



    2 comments:

    ARUL PRAKASH said...

    WHILE GIVING
    $dvipdf powerdot_test.dvi

    I GOT MESSAGE:


    dvips: ! Couldn't find header file pst-tools.pro.
    Note that an absolute path or a relative path with .. are denied in -R2 mode.

    WHAT TO DO ? I GOT BLANK PDF FILE

    musically_ut said...

    It seems that you do not have pstools installed.
    pst-tools.pro is a file which is part of the pstricks package.