cdsc_tex/slides_template/README.ltx-talk.md

ltx-talk port

This branch is the presentation template ported from beamer to the ltx-talk class. ltx-talk was written with tagging as a design goal.

Requirements

• LuaLaTeX
• TeX Live 2025 or newer (ltx-talk needs LaTeX 2025-11-01 or later); texlive-latex-recommended ships the class
• python3-pypdf, for assembling the notes PDF

You can install all three on Debian with:

apt install texlive-latex-recommended python3-pypdf

Building

make slides      # the deck; this is what gets uploaded
make notes       # double-width slide + notes pages for presenting
make pdfpc       # build the notes PDF and open it in pdfpc

Share the slides build, not the notes build: only the slides are tagged and expected to validate with tools like veraPDF.

Migrating from beamer

beamer	here
\begin{frame}{Title}	\frametitle{Title} inside the frame
\begin{frame}[standout]{}	\standout{...}
\sectionpage from the theme	\section{...} then \sectionpage
\subsectionpage	\subsection{...} then \subsectionpage
\note{...}, \note[item]{...}	same, after \usepackage{talk-notes}
\appendix	same
\alert{...}, \item<2->, \pause	same
\only<1>{...}	avoid; use \pause or \begin{itemize}[<+->]

Use \frametitle, not the braced argument: by default the class treats \begin{frame}{Title} as body text, so the title is not tagged as a heading. Give every \includegraphics an alt={...} description, and declare table header rows with \tagpdfsetup{table/header-rows={1}} before the tabular.

Speaker notes

ltx-talk has no \note command (see issue #156). talk-notes.sty defines one that records its text to a side file and contributes nothing to the slides; mknotes reads that file afterwards and builds the presenter PDF. Present it with dspdfviewer, pdfpc, or the web viewers Beamer Viewer and backstage.

Installing speaker notes

To use speaker notes in another ltx-talk document, copy two files out of this repository:

• mknotes
• talk-notes.sty

Load the package in the preamble:

\usepackage{talk-notes}

Write notes with \note{...}, or \note<2->{...} to bind one to particular slides of a frame. As in beamer, plain notes run together as text, each starting a new paragraph, and \note[item]{...} adds an entry to a numbered list printed after them.

Build the deck, then assemble the presenter PDF:

./mknotes example

That reads example.pdf and example.notes and writes example-notes.pdf, the double-width version you present from. The slides in example.pdf are untouched.

If fonts.tex is present it is used for the notes pages, so they match the deck. --preamble FILE names a different fragment.

Theme

trantor.sty is Marco Pompili's Metropolis-like theme for ltx-talk.