Benjamin Mako Hill
288d571df2
Converts it and fills in what was missing: install instructions, links to ltx-talk, trantor, veraPDF and the presenter viewers, the upstream issues behind the speaker-notes workaround and the overlay tagging bug, and how to use the notes machinery in another document. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
104 lines
3.4 KiB
Markdown
104 lines
3.4 KiB
Markdown
# ltx-talk port
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This branch is the presentation template ported from beamer to the
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[ltx-talk](https://github.com/josephwright/ltx-talk) class. ltx-talk was
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written with tagging as a design goal.
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## Requirements
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* LuaLaTeX
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* TeX Live 2025 or newer (ltx-talk needs LaTeX 2025-11-01 or later);
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`texlive-latex-recommended` ships the class
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* `python3-pypdf`, for assembling the notes PDF
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You can install all three on Debian with:
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```
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apt install texlive-latex-recommended python3-pypdf
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```
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## Building
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```
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make slides # the deck; this is what gets uploaded
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make notes # double-width slide + notes pages for presenting
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make pdfpc # build the notes PDF and open it in pdfpc
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```
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The notes are a kludge. They exist to be read while talking and not shared.
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Only the slides build is expected to validate with tools like
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[veraPDF](https://verapdf.org/).
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## Speaker notes
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ltx-talk has no `\note` command. Its README and website list speaker notes
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among what the class is for, but the feature is unwritten (see
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[issue #156](https://github.com/josephwright/ltx-talk/issues/156)).
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`talk-notes.sty` defines `\note` so that it records its text to a side file and
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contributes nothing to the slides. `mknotes` reads that file afterwards and
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builds the presenter PDF.
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The assembled page puts the slide on the left and, on the right, a grey band
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carrying the section and position in the talk, a thumbnail of the current
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slide flush into the corner, and the notes below. Previous and next slides are
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left to the viewer: [dspdfviewer](https://github.com/dannyedel/dspdfviewer),
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[pdfpc](https://pdfpc.github.io/), or the web viewers
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[Beamer Viewer](https://beamerviewer.euxane.eu/) and
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[backstage](https://bckstg.xyz/).
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### Installing speaker notes
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To use speaker notes in another ltx-talk document, copy two files out of this
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repository:
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- `mknotes`
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- `talk-notes.sty`
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Load the package in the preamble:
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```latex
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\usepackage{talk-notes}
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```
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Write notes with `\note{...}`, or `\note<2->{...}` to bind one to particular
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slides of a frame. As in beamer, plain notes run together as text, each
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starting a new paragraph, and `\note[item]{...}` adds an entry to a numbered
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list printed after them.
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Build the deck, then assemble the presenter PDF:
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```
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./mknotes example
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```
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That reads `example.pdf` and `example.notes` and writes `example-notes.pdf`,
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the double-width version you present from. The slides in `example.pdf` are
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untouched.
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If `fonts.tex` is present it is used for the notes pages, so they match the
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deck. `--preamble FILE` names a different fragment.
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## Theme
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`trantor.sty` is [Marco Pompili's](https://github.com/mrc-pop)
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[Metropolis-like theme](https://github.com/mrc-pop/trantor) for
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ltx-talk.
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## Known gaps
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Frame titles must be given as `\frametitle{...}` inside the frame, not as the
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argument to `\begin{frame}{...}`. Only the command form is tagged.
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ltx-talk tags frame titles at H4, well below sections, and its manual calls the
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relationship between frame titles and sectioning "still very much open".
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[Issue #33](https://github.com/josephwright/ltx-talk/issues/33): `\only<1>` and
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`\only<2>` produce output that fails validation. The `\pause` and `<+->` forms
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used here are unaffected.
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ltx-talk is version 0.5.x and warns that almost all interfaces may change.
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`talk-notes.sty` reads two internals, `\g__talk_frame_int` and
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`\g__talk_slide_int` — the first thing to check if a release breaks the notes
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build.
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