The Many Faces of D - slides [ot]

[retard]

Sun, 03 Oct 2010 11:00:43 -0500, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

> On 10/03/2010 06:57 AM, Russel Winder wrote:
>> On Sun, 2010-10-03 at 04:40 -0700, Jonathan M Davis wrote: [ . . . ]
>>> I just use latex for everything. That way I can use vim. It's much
>>> more pleasant that way.
>>
>> Also you can put the material into version control since the source is
>> mergeable -- unlike OOo files.
>>
>> Sadly though LaTeX, even with the beamer package, just isn't up to
>> doing what is easy with OOo.
> 
> I agree, though I'd also add that the likes of PowerPoint don't make it
> easy to create good presetations. In PowerPoint et al you are forced to
> focus on a flat structure that gets you boggled in details. For example
> it's trivial in PowerPoint to move slides around, which should be rare
> and odd in a well-conceived presentation. However imparting hierarchy to
> a presentation is not a feature.
> 
> Though a text-based presentation engine does not help with structure
> either, at least it doesn't stay in the way.

LyX (lyx.org) provides an alternative with WYSIWYM GUI and TeX export 
(LyX is very close to LaTeX). The only problem is, embedded TeX code 
blocks sometimes do not work and sometimes LyX stumbles into parsing bugs 
or fails to produce valid LaTeX for the backend. If I have to choose 
between the real PowerPoint and OpenOffice Impress, PowerPoint beats 
OpenOffice hands down.