In case I wasn't clear "That may be possible" refers to "Having a blank background may be possible". And I really don't want to sound ungrateful for all the great software available out there for free (by the way, I pay for software that helps me), but it is maybe the 4th time I decide to try to write down a set of slides using ConTeXt and I can't find a simple template with a plain background to download. Call me crazy, but I didn't expect that. In the webpage for Slides/Presentations in the Context wiki, there is no complete, working template for a presentation with slides. Sure, people may want to customize everything, but I would guess 90% of presentation have a title and an author, lists and pictures. It would be very helpful to have such a template (as basic as possible, with those four components). And a template like this would be a great starting point for people like me, that want to migrate at least part of their work to ConTeXt (I've had a very positive experience writing problem sets already), and do that by doing real work, under a time constraint, instead of setting time aside to learn everything writing down examples, etc. (which is great, but takes longer) That kind of audience needs a quick solution, and then references to customizations. The references for customizations exist; the quick solutions (templates go a long way in this case), no. And I think the additional cost of doing that is minimal. Thanks everybody, but I still have to find my simple template: title, author, lists, pictures and plain background. I guess I could just go and write down a large centered text for title, etc. but I was hoping there would be something already done for very simple slides. Best, Guilherme On Sun, Oct 18, 2009 at 11:45 PM, Guilherme P. de Freitas wrote:

Hi Thomas,

I did take a look at simple slides, and in their documentation, there is no "plain" background. All the backgrounds have some shape/color to it. That may be possible, but I couldn't tell just by spending 3-4 min skimming the documentation. As it is something very natural to want (a plain background), I assumed that it was either not supported without a hack, or too hard to figure out.

Best,

Guilherme

On Sun, Oct 18, 2009 at 10:23 PM, Thomas A. Schmitz wrote:

...

On Oct 19, 2009, at 5:06 AM, Guilherme P. de Freitas wrote:

...

Hi everybody,

I would like to be able to make very simple slides with ConTeXt, and I need a template. I would be very grateful if someone could point me to one. Think Apple's Keynotes or Lawrence Lessig's presentations. Plain background, not too much stuff on the slides whenever possible. If you need a more concrete example, here it is:

http://archive.gpfreitas.net/work/seminars/en/sisl/turingt-pres.pdf

It's just that I am experimenting with taking notes while I read a paper, and make a presentation direct from the notes. For that, using my favorite text editor is a lot better than using Apple's Keynote (which is otherwise very nice).

Thanks,

Guilherme

You could do worse than taking a look at simpleslides: http://modules.contextgarden.net/simpleslides The name really says it all...

Thomas ___________________________________________________________________________________ If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki!

maillist : ntg-context@ntg.nl / http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context webpage  : http://www.pragma-ade.nl / http://tex.aanhet.net archive  : http://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/ wiki     : http://contextgarden.net ___________________________________________________________________________________

-- Guilherme P. de Freitas http://www.gpfreitas.com

-- Guilherme P. de Freitas http://www.gpfreitas.com

you can also roll out your own style ... the s-pre-*.tex files have some examples (some styles can be run with --mode=demo)

Hans

Hi Hans, thanks for the help. What are the "s-re-*.tex" files? Where are they? By the way, I couldn't find any useful source code following the link given in the Wiki as a reference for those that wanted "more": http://www.pragma-ade.com/dir/general/sources/ There seem to be circular paths (you go to directory A, then B, then C, then you are back at A), and I couldn't find source files for the presentations. Best, Guilherme

It just occurred to me that a style was not a necessary thing, but an optional parameter, and that without it, the style would end up being "plain". That was the case, and therefore my problem is essentially solved. Thanks everybody, especially Thomas. Question: how do I get white text on black background? I tried adapting some commands from the Wiki, and that didn't work. Searching for the word "background" in the 'simple slides' documentation led me to information that was unrelated to what I wanted. For the sake of everybody out there wanting to use ConTeXt for their presentations, it would be very nice to have a link for a complete template, with title, author, a list and a picture in the Wiki. I slightly modified the simplest example in 'simple slides' (taking away the style, and including a list and a figure). It is available here: http://archive.gpfreitas.net/coursework/grad/caltech/year3/ss280/presentatio... It does need 'simple slides', so it might be a bad idea for the Wiki... but anyway, please, feel free to copy it to the wiki. Best, Guilherme On Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 12:02 AM, Guilherme P. de Freitas wrote:

In case I wasn't clear "That may be possible" refers to "Having a blank background may be possible".

And I really don't want to sound ungrateful for all the great software available out there for free (by the way, I pay for software that helps me), but it is maybe the 4th time I decide to try to write down a set of slides using ConTeXt and I can't find a simple template with a plain background to download. Call me crazy, but I didn't expect that.

In the webpage for Slides/Presentations in the Context wiki, there is no complete, working template for a presentation with slides. Sure, people may want to customize everything, but I would guess 90% of presentation have a title and an author, lists and pictures. It would be very helpful to have such a template (as basic as possible, with those four components). And a template like this would be a great starting point for people like me, that want to migrate at least part of their work to ConTeXt (I've had a very positive experience writing problem sets already), and do that by doing real work, under a time constraint, instead of setting time aside to learn everything writing down examples, etc. (which is great, but takes longer) That kind of audience needs a quick solution, and then references to customizations. The references for customizations exist; the quick solutions (templates go a long way in this case), no. And I think the additional cost of doing that is minimal.

Thanks everybody, but I still have to find my simple template: title, author, lists, pictures and plain background. I guess I could just go and write down a large centered text for title, etc. but I was hoping there would be something already done for very simple slides.

Best,

Guilherme

On Sun, Oct 18, 2009 at 11:45 PM, Guilherme P. de Freitas wrote:

...

Hi Thomas,

I did take a look at simple slides, and in their documentation, there is no "plain" background. All the backgrounds have some shape/color to it. That may be possible, but I couldn't tell just by spending 3-4 min skimming the documentation. As it is something very natural to want (a plain background), I assumed that it was either not supported without a hack, or too hard to figure out.

Best,

Guilherme

On Sun, Oct 18, 2009 at 10:23 PM, Thomas A. Schmitz wrote:

...

On Oct 19, 2009, at 5:06 AM, Guilherme P. de Freitas wrote:

...

Hi everybody,

I would like to be able to make very simple slides with ConTeXt, and I need a template. I would be very grateful if someone could point me to one. Think Apple's Keynotes or Lawrence Lessig's presentations. Plain background, not too much stuff on the slides whenever possible. If you need a more concrete example, here it is:

http://archive.gpfreitas.net/work/seminars/en/sisl/turingt-pres.pdf

It's just that I am experimenting with taking notes while I read a paper, and make a presentation direct from the notes. For that, using my favorite text editor is a lot better than using Apple's Keynote (which is otherwise very nice).

Thanks,

Guilherme

You could do worse than taking a look at simpleslides: http://modules.contextgarden.net/simpleslides The name really says it all...

Thomas ___________________________________________________________________________________ If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki!

maillist : ntg-context@ntg.nl / http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context webpage  : http://www.pragma-ade.nl / http://tex.aanhet.net archive  : http://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/ wiki     : http://contextgarden.net ___________________________________________________________________________________

-- Guilherme P. de Freitas http://www.gpfreitas.com

-- Guilherme P. de Freitas http://www.gpfreitas.com

-- Guilherme P. de Freitas http://www.gpfreitas.com

Well, thanks everybody for the invaluable help, these answers seem to be enough for me to do my next slides with ConTeXt. Best, Guilherme -- Guilherme P. de Freitas http://www.gpfreitas.com

On Mon, 19 Oct 2009, R. Bastian wrote:

Hello,

I downloaded the files "generic*** etc" and tried to install (following the 'simpleslides.pdf'); it seemed to succeed. But the compilation 'texexec generic ...tex' failed.

So I tried same tests: ------------------------------------------ rene@KUBUNTU64:~/Context/Slides$ texexec generic-talk-15min-45min.tex TeXExec | processing document 'generic-talk-15min-45min.tex' TeXExec | no ctx file found TeXExec | tex processing method: context TeXExec | TeX run 1 TeXExec | writing option file generic-talk-15min-45min.top TeXExec | using randomseed 822 TeXExec | tex engine: pdftex TeXExec | tex format: cont-en This is pdfTeX, Version 3.141592-1.40.3 (Web2C 7.5.6) \write18 enabled. (/usr/local/texlive/2007/texmf-context/web2c/natural.tcx) kpathsea: Running mktexfmt cont-en.fmt tcfmgr: config file `tcfmgr.map' (usually in $TEXMFMAIN/texconfig) not found. fmtutil: config file `fmtutil.cnf' not found. I can't find the format file `cont-en.fmt'! TeXExec | runtime: 0.040151 rene@KUBUNTU64:~/Context/Slides$ find . -name "cont-en.fmt" rene@KUBUNTU64:~/Context/Slides$ find /usr/local/texlive/2007/ -name "cont-en.fmt" /usr/local/texlive/2007/texmf-cache/luatex-cache/context/fc4b4b59a4904326c19d982f9a3c28fe/formats/cont-en.fmt /usr/local/texlive/2007/texmf-linux-64/web2c/xetex/cont-en.fmt rene@KUBUNTU64:~/Context/Slides$ find /usr/local/texlive/2007/ -name "tcfmgr.map" /usr/local/texlive/2007/texmf/texconfig/tcfmgr.map rene@KUBUNTU64:~/Context/Slides$ find /usr/local/texlive/2007/ -name "fmtutil.cnf" /usr/local/texlive/2007/texmf-var/web2c/fmtutil.cnf /usr/local/texlive/2007/texmf/web2c/fmtutil.cnf rene@KUBUNTU64:~/Context/Slides$ sudo mktexlsr mktexlsr: Updating /var/lib/texmf/ls-R-TEXMFMAIN... mktexlsr: Updating /var/lib/texmf/ls-R-TEXLIVE... mktexlsr: Updating /var/lib/texmf/ls-R... mktexlsr: Done. ------------------------------------------------- Something is wrong ...

Can you help me ?

You need to make the context format. Try fmtutil-sys cont-en Or, since you already have the xetex and the luatex formats, you can use context generic-talk*.tex or texexec --xetex generic-talk*.tex Aditya

On Tue, 20 Oct 2009, R. Bastian wrote:

On Mon, 19 Oct 2009 15:31:49 -0400 (EDT) Aditya Mahajan scribit:

...

...

Something is wrong ...

Can you help me ?

You need to make the context format. Try

fmtutil-sys cont-en

rene@KUBUNTU64:~/Context$ fmtutil-sys cont-fr fmtutil: fmtutil: unknown option `cont-fr'. Try fmtutil --help for help.

fmtutil-sys cont-en (not cont-fr). I don't know what is the right way to make the cont-fr format in TL. If that fails you can also try texexec --make --all

...

Or, since you already have the xetex and the luatex formats, you can use

context generic-talk*.tex

or

texexec --xetex generic-talk*.tex

rene@KUBUNTU64:~/Context$ texexec --xetex generic-talk*.tex TeXExec | processing document 'generic-talk*.tex' TeXExec | no ctx file found TeXExec | nothing to process TeXExec | runtime: 0.008959

Sorry, I was being lazy and assumed that your shell will expand the *. Aparantly it did not. What I meant was texexec --xetex generic-talk-15min-45min.tex Aditya

On Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 9:02 AM, Guilherme P. de Freitas < guilherme@gpfreitas.com> wrote:

In case I wasn't clear "That may be possible" refers to "Having a blank background may be possible".

And I really don't want to sound ungrateful for all the great software available out there for free (by the way, I pay for software that helps me), but it is maybe the 4th time I decide to try to write down a set of slides using ConTeXt and I can't find a simple template with a plain background to download. Call me crazy, but I didn't expect that.

In the webpage for Slides/Presentations in the Context wiki, there is no complete, working template for a presentation with slides. Sure, people may want to customize everything, but I would guess 90% of presentation have a title and an author, lists and pictures. It would be very helpful to have such a template (as basic as possible, with those four components). And a template like this would be a great starting point for people like me, that want to migrate at least part of their work to ConTeXt (I've had a very positive experience writing problem sets already), and do that by doing real work, under a time constraint, instead of setting time aside to learn everything writing down examples, etc. (which is great, but takes longer) That kind of audience needs a quick solution, and then references to customizations. The references for customizations exist; the quick solutions (templates go a long way in this case), no. And I think the additional cost of doing that is minimal.

Thanks everybody, but I still have to find my simple template: title, author, lists, pictures and plain background. I guess I could just go and write down a large centered text for title, etc. but I was hoping there would be something already done for very simple slides.

Best,

Not in order of importance *)simple slides *) s-pre-*.tex *) build your slide with layers Please consider this http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/powerpoint and this www.dabeaz.com His slide are really ok, cfr. www.dabeaz.com/python/*GIL*.pdf I think that every technical slides must be suitable for printing without effort and with hight quality. So I prefear A5 paper , black and white, one font for running text (CharisSIL actually) one font for listing (Incosolata, actually) and one for symbols (Unicode.otf, actually) . They render well on screen and on paper: see http://www.ntg.nl/EuroTeX2009/slides/luigi-slides.pdf For printing can be good A5 on A4 on top (bottom half space for your notes) or 2 A5 on A4 (more compact) -- luigi