% slides.tex
% Dennis Chao (8/03)

\documentclass[20pt,landscape]{foils}
\usepackage{multicol}

\newif\ifpdf
\ifx\pdfoutput\undefined
  \pdffalse % we are not running PDFLaTeX
\else
  \pdfoutput=1 % we are running PDFLaTeX
  \pdftrue
\fi

\ifpdf
  \usepackage[pdftex]{graphicx}
  \pdfcompresslevel=9                % I wish I knew what this meant
  \usepackage{pdftricks}
  \begin{psinputs}
    \usepackage[usenames]{color}
  \end{psinputs}
    \DeclareGraphicsExtensions{.pdf,.jpg}
  \pdfinfo{
    /Title      (Making slides in LaTeX)
    /Author     (Dennis L. Chao)
  }
  \MyLogo{\includegraphics[width=1.35in]{logo.pdf}}
\else
  \usepackage[usenames]{color}
  \usepackage{graphicx}
  \DeclareGraphicsExtensions{.eps}
  \MyLogo{\includegraphics[width=1.35in]{logo.eps}}
\fi

\usepackage{helvetic}

\title{How I make slides in \LaTeX}
\author{\large Dennis Chao\\
        \large Department of Computer Science\\
        \large University of New Mexico\\
        \large \texttt{dlchao@cs.unm.edu}}
\date{August 2003}

\definecolor{MyGray}{rgb}{0.7,0.7,0.8}
\topmargin -0.5in
\textheight 6in
\setlength{\foilheadskip}{-0.25in}

\makeatletter
\renewcommand\@listIa{\leftmargin\leftmargini
\topsep 14\p@ \@plus 2\p@ \@minus 4\p@
\parsep 6\p@ \@plus 4\p@ \@minus 4\p@
\itemsep 0\p@ \@plus 4\p@ \@minus 2\p@}
\makeatother

\begin{document}
\maketitle

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
\foilhead{Outline}

\begin{itemize}
\item Introduction
\item Using the foils package
\item Conclusions
\end{itemize}

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
\foilhead{Introduction}

{\flushleft Why I make slides in \LaTeX:}
%\vspace{-.1in}
\begin{itemize}
\item Don't like PowerPoint
\item Can import text and figures from other \LaTeX{} documents
\item Looks ok
\end{itemize}

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
\foilhead{Outline}

\begin{itemize}
\item {\color{MyGray} Introduction}
\item Using the foils package
\item {\color{MyGray} Conclusions}
\end{itemize}

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
\foilhead{\LaTeX{} packages}

I think you just need the foils package, available
at \texttt{www.ctan.org}.  Also getting the pdftricks package
is recommended.

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
\foilhead{Compiling the document}

{\flushleft I put conditionals in the source so \LaTeX{} can be used, but
I use pdflatex for the final output because:}
\begin{itemize}
\item Acroread is available on all platforms, so pdfs are a portable
presentation format.  Acroread has a full-screen mode that looks good.
\item PDFs are nice because web search engines can parse them.  
This means that you can put your talk slides on the web and not
only can you view them in a web browser using the acroread plugin,
they can be found by people searching the web.
\item I often use lots of figures in my slides, so it is nice that 
pdflatex can read jpg files.
\end{itemize}

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
\foilhead{Outline}

\begin{itemize}
\item {\color{MyGray} Introduction}
\item {\color{MyGray} Using the foils package}
\item Conclusions
\end{itemize}

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
\foilhead{Conclusions}

Making slides in \LaTeX{} is easy.

\end{document}