Haifux lectures for fun and profit
Haifux has been hosting
quality lectures by the finest free software and Linux developers
in Israel since 1999. If there's an interesting topic you'd
like to give a lecture on, we would like to hear!
Contact the haifux mailing
list to discuss potential future lectures. We also take lecture
requests...
A Haifux lecture is at most two hours long, including a 10 minute
break. If the subject cannot be covered in sufficient detail in one
meeting, several meetings can be dedicated to it.
A Haifux lecture is open to the public and free of charge. An
invitation to the lecture is sent to haifux@haifux.org mailing
list, as well as to
linux-il@linux.org.il mailing list.
Presentation aids include a projector, a computer which is
connected to the internet, and the possibility to connect a laptop. A
whiteboard is also available. If you need a laptop running Linux, one
of the club members will be happy to volunteer it.
The lecture hall is located inside the Technion, which limits car access to it.
If you need a car permit, please email you car number, your name and ID number to webmaster@haifux.org at least two days in advance.
Slide Guidelines
- Lecturers are encouraged to publish their lecture slides several days in advance.
- Lecturers are encouraged to supply an abstract (of about two sentences).
-
We do request that
the slides be in an open format e.g. html, ps or pdf. OpenOffice.org formats areacceptable, but more portable formats are prefered (i.e., such formats that have a browser on most computers).
- Lecturers are also encouraged to publish the source for the lecture slides (this request holds in the case of pdf slides - for example the *.tex source files).
- When links are mentioned in the slides, please write the target of the link such that it will be visible to the audience, as well as printable. This is a bad example for a link. http://www.example.com is a good example for a link.
- Please create at least an additional version of the slides, which is easily printable. For example, a single html file. Remember that many people wish to study the slides before the lecture.
Creating slides in an HTML format
HTML is an open format, with standards.
Using standard HTML ensures that
every browser which wishes to support it, can and will show it properly.
A good way to verify that your html is indeed standard, is to place the "W3C check referer" button in your page, as it appears on the bottom of this page. Clicking it will then automatically check the page.
Creating slides in an open format using LaTeX
LaTeX
can be used to generate high-quality
PDF
files suitable for presentation. The article
Using LaTeX to create quality PDF documents for the World Wide Web
by D. P. Story is a good technical introduction, and also gives some
important advice about structuring a document, effective use of color
etc.
The two most common ways to create PDF files from LaTeX sources are:
- Use LaTeX to generate a
DVI file, convert it to
postscript
using a driver
(e.g. dvips), and
convert the result to
PDF
using ps2pdf.
latex *.tex
dvips -Ppdf -G0 *.dvi -o
ps2pdf *.ps
Dvips supports EPS graphics, but if you include the same eps
picture several times, it will get copied again and again into
the postscript file.
Dvips supports the package pstricks.
Dvips does not support png and jpg images;
to embed such files you have to convert them to eps,
for example:
pngtopnm picture.png | pnmtoeps.
Converting png to eps using gimp results in very large files.
- Use
PDFLaTeX to create PDF files directly from LaTeX sources.
PDFLaTeX allows embedding of PNG and
JPG images in the PDF file (it includes them once, even if
they are used several times in the document),
but does not support importing EPS
graphics, nor the package
pstricks.
EPS graphics can be converted to PDF for inclusion, using the script
epstopdf;
a substitute for pstricks is
pdftricks.
The following LaTeX classes are useful in making presentation slides.
- slides
- A class for creating presentation slides, part of the basic LaTeX
distribution. Provides basic functionality, including overlays.
Under the old LaTeX 2.09 it had to be run using a separate
program,
SliTeX
- seminar
- Provides more functionality than the
slides class.
Supports animated transitions between slides.
An example of the input and output of seminar
can be seen in lecture
72.
- prosper
- A class intended to create PDF slides with an appearance similar to
certain commercial presentation software.
Support for animated transitions between slides is more
straightforward than with
seminar, but Hebrew support
is more difficult because of the class's heavy reliance on
PostScript.
The class depends on the package pstricks, so it
doesn't work with PDFLaTeX.
Here's a short
tutorial;
an example of the input and output can be seen in lecture
63.
-
beamer
- Similar in concept to
prosper, but designed to
work with PDFLaTeX.
Creating slides in an open format Using Graphical Presentation Tools (WYSIWYG)
The internal format of the OpenOffice tools is an open format, since the software which writes it is a free software.
- simpress from the
Open Office package. A template for those who wish to use Open Office can be found here.
- LyX creates TeX files using a very convinient interface.
-
kpresenter
from the koffice package.
Creating slides in an open format Using non-Graphical Presentation tools
- Perl-Point. This link is a lecture about Perl-Point, written in Perl-Point, which includes the source.
Perl-Point can create both LaTex and HTML output.
- DocBook
contains a slide presentor that can translate DocBook/XML
into a multitude
of formats: HTML, TeX, Word RTF, etc.
- MagicPoint. Creates big postscript files, and HTML files without any markups or big GIFs. An example of the input and output can be seen in lecture 44.
If you have any comments or additions to this list, please tell us.