Improving presentation management and production

[Graham Smith]

Given lecture material has three components:

1. Slides for digital projection (preferable PDFs rather than PowerPoint or Keynote)
2. Lecture notes to support what I need to say and remember
3. Lecture handout

I regularly update all three, but I am finding keeping all three in sync to be a bit tedious.

I'm not sure what the solution is, but what I am visualising is some sort of single document, where you  write the lecture handout. I could then update this with new information between presenting the lecture.

Then do something like tagging  key phrases that I want as the headline for each slide, and then somehow export these as individual slides.  Then tag key facts and phrases that I want for the lecture notes that could be printed out to accompany the slides.

But having said that,I can see reasons why, if even possible, this wouldn't work because the sides would still need images or figures added. Plus it doesn't  build in a way of storing info that I "might" want to add, but not sure yet.

Does anyone have a clever approach to dealing with this.

Thanks,

Graham

[Richard Karnesky]

What are you using to compose each of these three things right now?

The LaTeX Beamer class [1] fits the bill--it produces PDFs and can
keep the contents of a presentation and an article in a single .tex
file. Obviously, though, this is a different paradigm than using a
WYSIWYG office suite to assemble your presentations.

[1] <http://latex-beamer.sourceforge.net/>

You could just organize everything in your file system: have one
folder for each lecture & keep your three separate files in that
directory. Version control software might help too. Where possible,
make the files re-use the same media (linking to a graphic instead of
have an embedded graphic)--this way you'd only have to replace it
once.

You also might be able to combine these: use the 'hidden slide' and/or
notes feature of your presentation software and/or append supplemental
slides to the end of your presentation. These can then be used for
your personal notes and/or the handouts.

--Rick

[Eric Durbrow]

Graham: This is an excellent question. If you are on the Mac, have
you tried OmniOutliner? This will NOT satisfy all your requirements
but it does have a Service in which you can add clippings or
information to an existing project. No tagging, of course. So this
does not help you with the last two paragraphs in your message.
Anyone else?
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[Graham Smith]

Rick,

Thanks.

I have been using the usual suspects of Word and PowerPoint, but I have also been using Powerdot class in Lyx, which I did think showed promise. I will have a look at Beamer again, but there was some reason, which I can't remember now, that pushed me towards Powedot.

I already use a folder system roughly as you describe, but have graphics in a shared folder. However, although this helps with organisation it doesn't help with cross file update sunchronisation, hence the one file aspiration.

Graham

[Graham Smith]

Eric,

Officially, I am on Windows, but except when I have to, I use Mac and Linux. I've started to use DevonThink for gathering together information together. 

Having said that assuming you can print selected levels of the outlne, there could be potential, to use top level for the slide text, second level for "key facts" which could also provide lecture notes, and then lower levels for the hand out.

It would depend exactly on how much control OmniOutliner allowed, but now that you suggest it, an outliner could have potential.

Thanks,

Graham

[Graham Smith]

Eric,

To add to my reply, I have now looked at OmniOutliner, and if you go the Pro version, it seems to offer a lot of promise. You can set it to print each top level heading onto a different page and you can switch off and on individual lines of the outline before exporting (or printing). At least I think it does, I will need to download the demo of the ro version and try it for real.

If you add the clipping and information management tools for OmniOutliner to this, at the moment it may actually meet all my requirements, the tagging was just so you could control the output.

Thanks again,

Graham

On 21/02/2008, Eric Durbrow <eric.d...@comcast.net> wrote:

[Eric Durbrow]

Graham: A third party free option allows for LaTeX. Go back to the
OmniOutliner site and look for Extras or Downloads.

Eric Durbrow Ph.D. eric.d...@comcast.net
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[Graham Smith]

Richard,

A follow up on this as I have now read the beamer documentation and as you suggest it seems to do "exactly" what I wanted.

BUT it will need some considerable amount of work to learn how to use it, and I'm not sure if it all works from within Lyx, which I have at least a bit of experience with.

None the less, the long term benefits of sorting this out, should make a tremendous difference to the difficulties I currently have trying to keep these different things in sync.

Graham

On 21/02/2008, Richard Karnesky <karn...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Graham Smith]

Eric,

Ah yes several useful thngs in there, thanks again.

Graham

[Jody Klymak]

Not to derail the technical discussion too much, but do you really
need all three sets of notes?

I was at a research institute for 10 years, but am now at a teaching
institution, and I was surprised by the amount of material the
students expect to get handed to them! Back when I went to school (a
whole 15 years ago) students took their own notes during lectures, and
we had a textbook. I don't recall ever getting a set of class notes.
A large part of the learning experience was abstracting for ourselves
what was important.

I'm not trying to criticize - I'm no master teacher - but I am curious
why this new trend has developed.

Cheers, Jody

[Graham Smith]

Jody,

Its a good question.

In the UK, I suspect the change came with students having to pay to study for their degrees. When I did my degree, it was paid for by the state, and part of the money was specifically allocated for books.

Now that students are paying for their degree via loans their expectations seem different. eg sufficient text books in the University library so they don't need to buy any.

However, the handouts are still only directing independent study, and certainly in my subjects there are no easy and obvious text books that could replace them (there are in terms of titles, but not in terms of content).

And students still take copious  notes during my lectures, the handouts  just help avoid errors in copying down factual material, access to figures  used in the lecture and  an expansion of  aspects which couldn't be dealt with , at sufficient detail, in the  lecture.

Graham

[Eric Durbrow]

Just my two cents: I minimize words on lectures and use slides for
pictures or videos or to ask questions. I write the answers to
questions on the a dry erase board as students try to answer the
question posted on the slide. Increases interaction and engagement
and decreases my speed (which is a good think). Also, I think the
physical action of writing notes improves retention and recall.

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[Jan Erik Moström]

Jody Klymak <jkl...@gmail.com> 08-02-23 10.03

>I'm not trying to criticize - I'm no master teacher - but I am curious
>why this new trend has developed.

To be honest, I think it's a result of the new technology. When I started to teach it was way to much work to give the students lecture notes, now it's just a matter of uploading them to a website ... 30 seconds of work.

But I agree, I sometimes suspect that it's counter productive.

                        jem

[Tom Birkland]

Hi, all,

This may take us even further off topic, but I think this is really useful. I'm a social scientist, and the class I taught last semester went very poorly, in large part because I didn't use a lot of the technology to which they and I have become accustomed. I am wondering if it might not be a good idea to (1) use powerpoint slides and (2) post them on the web for students to retrieve. As to (1) I have read Tufte's work on the stultifying effect of powerpoint, but my sense is that this is most stultifying when you are using PP to try to inspire creativity or solve problems (like damaged spacecraft), but that PP in a lecture setting might not be much different than writing on a board--with the big exception being that you can then upload the slides to the web, email them, etc. My work is different than, say, a math, chem, bio, or computer science course in which there may be a lot of interactive drawing on the black/whiteboard.

On the other hand, I don't want to spoon feed students (oh, and the class was only about 25 students). I am using PP more this term for two grad seminars, and they seem to be going OK even with much smaller courses. My sense is that using PP slides keeps me more focused and on topic, and less prone to side-trips and story-telling as examples. They seem to impose discipline.

Sorry if this is way off topic, but it's something I've been thinking about a while. Thoughts?

Tom

--
Thomas A. Birkland
William T. Kretzer Professor of Public Policy
North Carolina State University
Campus Box 8102
Raleigh, NC 27695
office 919 513-7799 cell 518 229-8814
www.tombirkland.com

[Eric Durbrow]

This is a good post/question; thanks. My take on the below is that
this might improve evaluations/learning but only because students
EXPECT PowerPoint slides and hand-outs. One option is to just build a
PowerPoint show with only slide titles as questions and then fill in
the bullets with student responses to the question or problem. E.g.

Slide Title: What is Society?
(bullets are blank but are filled in as students answer "live
together" and "talk together" and "common language" etc).

Then you post the slides after class on the web or by email.

P.S. Website is probably more efficient because they you don't have
to worry with student email problems (e.g., Yahoo flags your messages
as spam).

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[Graham Smith]

My problem and the reason why I have the problem raised in my original post, is that a "good" powerpoint slide, is going to make a "poor" handout.

The things I have read suggest that students can't read and listen at the same time, so if you include enough information to make the slide useful as a hand out, then it will detract from the lecture.

I am now re-doing all my lecture material, where the slides (now PDF and not PowerPoint) only include an image and a single key point. The Handout now includes the detail that I used to have as bullet points on the slide and additional text expanding on the bullet points in the same way that I expanded on them during the lecture - when I had the bullet points. If you see what I mean.

My feeling is that it frees me up in the lecture to respond to student questions, knowing that all the key points that I want to get across are carefully explained in the handout.

I hate stifling valuable discussion, because I feel I have to cover everything in my powerpoints

Students who miss the lecture can now download something much more useful than a set of PowerPoints.

However, more specifically to address your point, in my few years teaching, I have found that cohorts very tremendously from year to year, and an approach to a lecture that was met with great enthusiasm by students one year, can be hated by students the year after.

Graham

[arehrlich]

Not much of an expert here, but I've used the Notes Page section of
the PowerPoint slides to provide additional information to my
students. When I print out the notes, it has the slide - an outline
segment, fact, diagram or whatever - on the top with as much
additional information in the notes section as I want to provide. It
was a pain - and an expense - when I had to print them and hand them
out, but now they can download them and read them on their laptops.

Just my thoughts.

Alan

On Feb 24, 10:47 am, "Graham Smith" <myotis...@gmail.com> wrote:
> My problem and the reason why I have the problem raised in my original post,
> is that a "good" powerpoint slide, is going to make a "poor" handout.
>
> The things I have read suggest that students can't read and listen at the
> same time, so if you include enough information to make the slide useful as
> a hand out, then it will detract from the lecture.
>
> I am now re-doing all my lecture material, where the slides (now PDF and not
> PowerPoint) only include an image and a single key point. The Handout now
> includes the detail that I used to have as bullet points on the slide and
> additional text expanding on the bullet points in the same way that I
> expanded on them during the lecture - when I had the bullet points. If you
> see what I mean.
>
> My feeling is that it frees me up in the lecture to respond to student
> questions, knowing that all the key points that I want to get across are
> carefully explained in the handout.
>
> I hate stifling valuable discussion, because I feel I have to cover
> everything in my powerpoints
>
> Students who miss the lecture can now download something much more useful
> than a set of PowerPoints.
>
> However, more specifically to address your point, in my few years teaching,
> I have found that cohorts very tremendously from year to year, and an
> approach to a lecture that was met with great enthusiasm by students one
> year, can be hated by students the year after.
>
> Graham
>

> On 24/02/2008, Tom Birkland <tom.birkl...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > Hi, all,
>
> > This may take us even further off topic, but I think this is really
> > useful. I'm a social scientist, and the class I taught last semester went

> > very poorly, in large part because I *didn't *use a lot of the technology

> > to which they and I have become accustomed. I am wondering if it might not
> > be a good idea to (1) use powerpoint slides and (2) post them on the web for
> > students to retrieve. As to (1) I have read Tufte's work on the stultifying
> > effect of powerpoint, but my sense is that this is most stultifying when you
> > are using PP to try to inspire creativity or solve problems (like damaged
> > spacecraft), but that PP in a lecture setting might not be much different
> > than writing on a board--with the big exception being that you can then
> > upload the slides to the web, email them, etc. My work is different than,
> > say, a math, chem, bio, or computer science course in which there may be a
> > lot of interactive drawing on the black/whiteboard.
>
> > On the other hand, I don't want to spoon feed students (oh, and the class
> > was only about 25 students). I am using PP more this term for two grad
> > seminars, and they seem to be going OK even with much smaller courses. My
> > sense is that using PP slides keeps me more focused and on topic, and less
> > prone to side-trips and story-telling as examples. They seem to impose
> > discipline.
>
> > Sorry if this is way off topic, but it's something I've been thinking
> > about a while. Thoughts?
>
> > Tom
>

> > On Sat, Feb 23, 2008 at 2:50 PM, Jan Erik Moström <most...@gmail.com>
> > wrote:
>
> > > Jody Klymak <jkly...@gmail.com> 08-02-23 10.03

[Graham Smith]

Alan,

Yes I've done that as well, and it is a good solution when everything relies on downloads, but we are expected to give paper copies as well as them being available to download, which added up to a lot of paper, especially as, I remember, the "notes" box is a fixed size and you end up with a lot of white paper.

But I agree that this is an option.

Grahan

[arehrlich]

Grahan,

This might be overkill, but since you are expected to hand out paper
copies, you can take the PP Notes pages and print them out using
Clickbook. This is a gem of a program that can turn a simple Word
file, or PP presentation into a booklet - printing four pages per
sheet of paper. If your copier can handle 2-sided printing it saves a
lot of paper. It also makes you look cool because you can easily
design it to look like a booklet. All it takes is folding it.

I use Clickbook to make handouts for a number of programs I give. If
you want to check it out - www.bluesquirrel.com.

Alan

On Feb 25, 12:55 am, "Graham Smith" <myotis...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Alan,
>
> Yes I've done that as well, and it is a good solution when everything relies
> on downloads, but we are expected to give paper copies as well as them being
> available to download, which added up to a lot of paper, especially as, I
> remember, the "notes" box is a fixed size and you end up with a lot of white
> paper.
>
> But I agree that this is an option.
>
> Grahan
>

[Graham Smith]

Alan,

Thanks,

I have had copies of Clickbook and Fine Print on my PC for many years now and both are very useful. And yes this would make paper handout look a bit different.

Grahaam

On 25/02/2008, arehrlich <areh...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Eve Fogarty]

Alan and all, I've done that same thing. I thought though that Microsoft OneNote was supposed to allow one to do all of these things. This is one of the top 10 benefits:

 

Office OneNote 2007 gives you the flexibility to capture all of the information presented in meetings, including status updates, presentations, documents, typed and handwritten notes, and more. With all meeting notes stored in one location, everyone has access to the same information, helping ensure that all team members are on the same page and that everyone walks away with a consistent set of action items.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/onenote/HA101650251033.aspx

I know something similar exists for the MAC platform as well. Perhaps I'm being too naive with your needs.

 

Eve

--
Eve

--
Eve

[Eric Durbrow]

Eve: Might be thinking of Circus Ponies NoteBook or AquaMind's
NoteTaker on the Mac platform. Regarding NoteBook, it is an elegant
app but development seems to be very incremental lately.

Eric Durbrow Ph.D. eric.d...@comcast.net
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[Graham Smith]

Eve,

Is this aimed at my original question, because it doesn't seem to address the problem.

This seems to be aimed at gathering and collating information rather than preparing and managing student presentations and handouts. Or am I simply not understanding the scope of OneNote.

Graham

[Eve Fogarty]

Eric, yes - thank you! I have two MACs now and want to start using one of these NoteTakers (-:  By the way, one of the MACs is the Macbook Air - I use it class to capture notes as my students present. It is so portable and easy to use!

 

Eve

[Eve Fogarty]

Graham, I honestly thought that by using OneNote you would be able to put everything together for students and then print it out or make it available on the web. Again, perhaps I am being too naive.

For example, see the following from Toronto: http://www.microsoft.com/canada/casestudies/universityoftoronto.mspx

 

I hope someone out there has used OneNote for the purpose. I will also check with colleagues who do use it extensively and post an update here (-: So long as you are able to make your information available to students, OneNote should allow you to capture everything. See the brief explanation of one educator's use at http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/onenote/HA010784851033.aspx

 

Eve

[Graham Smith]

Eve,

But...

I'm not looking for some thing to put everthing together for students. That would be item 4 on my list.

I have been using PowerpoInt slides where the slides are used for both the presentation and the class handout. Therefore, any changes made to the Powerpoint is reflected in both the presentation slides and the handout, because they are the same file.

This is common practice at my University, but slides with enough text to be useful as handouts make for slides that have too much text to be appropriate as presentation aids.

I have now started to produce a written handout which includes and expands on the information that used to be bullet points on the PowerPoint slides, and reduced the text on the slides making them more effective presentation aids.

The difficulty is that every year when I update my lectures, I need to update two documents rather than one.

The two solutions suggested earlier (OmniOutliner and Beamer) both show some promise, as you can keep one file and update information once in that file, but then  by selecting relevant parts output a Presentation OR a handout each only including appropriate content.

Beamer in particular has been written to address exactly the problem I described in my first post. OmniOutliner looks as if it will also do the job, but not so simply.

Indeed I gave my first Beamer created presentation this morning (but just the presentation part)

[Eve Fogarty]

Graham,

 

Thank you for taking the time to explain further. My apologies for not fully recognizing what you are hoping to achieve. I have not used Beamer, but have looked at an advanced slide presentation done in it and was impressed. Good luck with the program. I hope it does exactly what you need. I appreciate learning more about these tools.

 

Eve

[Graham Smith]

Eve,

No problem, its often difficult as threads meander around an original question to fully understand what the original queston was.

I'm currently using Beamer in Lyx, which gives it a nice and easy graphical interface, but to use it properly it looks as if I am going have to learn latex, which is a bit of challenge.

[Eve Fogarty]

Graham,

 

I have followed the discussions on LaTeX and believe it could be challenging (-: I do not have programming experience and while I know my way around the typical applications, I don't know that I have the necessary time to learn it. Again, I do hope it works out for you!

 

Best,

 

Eve

--
Eve

--
Eve

[Graham Smith]

Eve,

Lyx is no more challenging than Word and gives superb quality printed output. There are problems with collaborating with others using Word, but for all other work it is an excellent way of improving efficiency and quality.

But finding time to fully use Beamer is going to be difficult.

[Silke Schneider]

Hi all,

I started using LaTeX (including Beamer) last year. I wrote my first paper in about 6 weeks, and don’t think learning LaTeX added much to the “normal” writing time (and my “programming” experience is restricted to writing syntax in statistics programmes like SPSS or Stata). In the end you save a lot of time fiddling with formatting in Word! What took longest was probably getting the tables look alright (I have wide and long tables, which can be a tricky trial-and-error process. But looks so much better than tables in Word!). Never tried Lyx, as I like to see what’s going on.

I also use the Beamer feature of writing slide and “article” information in the same document, and prefer “commenting out” stuff from deleting it when it is not relevant to a specific version of a presentation/handout. Also very handy for CVs: Keep all the information, but streamline it for the current purpose.

I only use Word for collaborative work since then.

Good luck!
Silke

---

Von: Eve Fogarty <evefo...@gmail.com>
Antworten an: <The-Efficie...@googlegroups.com>
Datum: Mon, 25 Feb 2008 17:02:38 -0500
An: the-efficient-academic <The-Efficie...@googlegroups.com>
Betreff: Fwd: Improving presentation management and production

[Eve Fogarty]

Graham,

 

I found the 139 minute guide to Lyx and I see now what is involved. I do understand about Beamer and hope you find the resources necessary to learn it (-: Thanks again!

 

Eve

[Bill Harris]

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> Lyx is no more challenging than Word and gives superb quality printed
> output. There are problems with collaborating with others using Word, but
> for all other work it is an excellent way of improving efficiency and
> quality.

For those new to LaTeX,
http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/info/lshort/english/lshort.pdf is a
good, quick introduction (its subtitle is "Or LATEX2e in 139
minutes"). If you get into it further, Emacs (the editor) and AUCTeX
(the add-in) make generating LaTeX code easier.

> But finding time to fully use Beamer is going to be difficult.

That's true. I am teaching my first university course this winter,
and I am using Beamer. I'd like to have set up the entire course in
one file, as they suggest, and split it into lectures, but I didn't
take the time to figure that out. Doing straight beamer seems easy
enough; adding article mode is something I haven't yet tried.

I tried to post the other day about asciidoc
(http://www.methods.co.nz/asciidoc/) and http://liksom.info/blog/
(search around for "beamer backend"). That's a very easy way to get
started in beamer, assuming you want to produce slides only and you
can install both bits of software. I tried it for one week (the first
week it was announced), and it looked as if it would be really good
for basic slides. I wanted to add LaTeX math mode stuff, and I didn't
know how to do that, so I switched back to beamer. The beamer backend
is early-stage code, so it did generate a few errors that didn't
affect the production of slides.

That said, I'd only go that way if I wanted the simpler features of
beamer and wanted to save a bit of typing; If you want to use more or
all of
beamer, it's probably better, at least at this stage, just to use beamer.

Oh, and there's DocBook Slides, too. I've never tried them, but they
sound as if they might do what the OP wanted, assuming you know xsl
and xpath.

Bill

PS: I've tried to post to this group multiple times, but it always
fails, saying I'm not a member. I am a member, but I can't figure out
how to post with my regular email address, as I can to other Google
Groups. Is there a secret incantation to add my regular email address
to this Google Group?
- --
Bill Harris http://facilitatedsystems.com/weblog/
Facilitated Systems Everett, WA 98208 USA
http://facilitatedsystems.com/ phone: +1 425 337-5541

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[Bill Harris]

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On Mon, Feb 25, 2008 at 2:16 PM, Silke Schneider wrote:

> I only use Word for collaborative work since then.

FWIW, I have used latex2rtf successfully when I needed to produce a
.doc file to share with others. At least I can start in LaTeX then;
if the changes I get back aren't too large, it's worth me typing them
into my LaTeX source.

http://facilitatedsystems.com/links.html#writing has a few links that
might help.

Bill

- --
Bill Harris http://facilitatedsystems.com/weblog/
Facilitated Systems Everett, WA 98208 USA
http://facilitatedsystems.com/ phone: +1 425 337-5541

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[Graham Smith]

Silke,

Interesting, certainly in the last few days since trying Beamer, I have also been using Aquamacs and TextMate to do some simple things directly in Latex, as well as editing my Beamer presentation.

I now feel much happier about Latex than I did last week. And I am convinced that the up front learning will be repaid by the saving the time I currently spend fiddling with Word to get things to look right.

Graham

[Graham Smith]

Eve,

I'm not sure there is a 139 minute guide to Lyx, are you sure this wasn't the guide to Latex?

Have a look at http://www.lyx.org/ and from there go to the Wiki link.

[Graham Smith]

Bill,

Thanks, its the Article mode that appeals, and Beamer for presentations is very very easy to use as a class in Lyx. I shall have a look at assciidoc.

I am looking forward to making more use of it.

Graham

[Graham Smith]

Bill,

I have used this before, with some success, but all the solutions  I have come up with just aren't good enough for collaborating on a report, paper or book where files are being edited and re-edited as well as having complex formatting and graphics.

Graham

On 25/02/2008, Bill Harris <wshar...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Eric Durbrow]

Graham, Bill, et al. Is the appeal of Lyx and Latex because you guys
use equations/formulas in your lectures and publications? Are there
any social scientists using Latex and Lyx? I noticed that the APA
article format seems out-of-date or unsupported.

Eric Durbrow Ph.D. eric.d...@comcast.net
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[Graham Smith]

Eric,

The appeal for me of Lyx is that it is multiplatform (I use LInux, Mac and Windows), the quality of properly typeset ouput, which looks so much better than output from Word, and that you can write without thinking about layout or formatting, knowing that Latex will take care of it for you.

I do use some equations, but what I do can be easily coped with in Word, even though they don't look as good.

There have been active discussions on the Lyx support forum about the APA bundle  with comments about it being updated 10th September 2007. However, I didn't read through every message just picked out some messages from my "APA" search.

Graham

[Bill Harris]

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On Mon, Feb 25, 2008 at 3:51 PM, Eric Durbrow wrote:
>
> Graham, Bill, et al. Is the appeal of Lyx and Latex because you guys
> use equations/formulas in your lectures and publications? Are there
> any social scientists using Latex and Lyx? I noticed that the APA
> article format seems out-of-date or unsupported.

For me, the appeal is that it separates creating material and laying
out material (I think I think better about each if I do them
separately), that it can look better (certainly the typesetting seems
almost always better), that beamer has some nice display features I'd
have to do manually in PPT (pathfinder / navigation indicators), and
that the file format is more likely to be readable in the future than
a binary format. Even if LaTeX goes away, I can still read the text
source.

As for non-physical science work using LaTeX, see
http://www.tug.org/texshowcase/ for some possible examples.

To be honest, I tend to do simple reports in asciidoc, nicely
formatted stuff and presentations in LaTeX, stuff I think might turn
into a bigger book-type work in LaTeX or DocBook, layout stuff in
Scribus, and occasional, one-off short pieces in OO.o.

Bill
- --
Bill Harris http://facilitatedsystems.com/weblog/
Facilitated Systems Everett, WA 98208 USA
http://facilitatedsystems.com/ phone: +1 425 337-5541

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[Richard Karnesky]

> Graham, Bill, et al. Is the appeal of Lyx and Latex because you guys
> use equations/formulas in your lectures and publications?

I find it to be faster and easier to author and revise & to keep in
version control systems. This is particularly true for revising and/
or replacing figures (which seems to take up a lot of time, as some of
them get changed when a document is to be reused). While it is
possible to link media in a WYSIWYG office program, it can be
cumbersome. With LaTeX, media is only embedded at the last possible
moment (when the document is "compiled").

As mentioned before, the results are more visually appealing & also
functional--cross references just work (in both articles and in
presentations).

> Are there any social scientists using Latex and Lyx?

While MS Office is the most common, there are a few who use LaTeX.
Some merely use it to typeset their initial document (which is often
based in some XML format). Others use LaTeX directly or through LyX.
I thought that I had seen a "Beamer for XXX" (where XXX='Historians'
or 'Geographers' or something), but I can't find it immediately.

> I noticed that the APA
> article format seems out-of-date or unsupported.

The APA style itself is fine & you can create new styles or download
styles for social science journals. BibTeX might be a weak point,
depending on the complexity of some of the things that you need to
cite. If endnote works for you, BibTeX will probably be "good
enough." However, many of these flat databases AREN'T good enough for
some social scientists.

The biggest deficiency will be in collaboration. Some of your
colleagues or publishers may wish to receive a Word or PPT document
from you. These aren't impossible to generate, but neither are they
trivial.

--Rick

[willem]

Hi Eric,

Yes there are, and especially those working in non-Western languages
thankfully take the advantages of LaTeX, or, on the Mac, increasingly
Xe(La)TeX. XeTeX is a wonderful development, as it allows you to use
Unicode fonts within a (La)TeX environment.

Why use LaTeX at all? Output quality for one thing. Freeware for
another. In the past, platform-independency also played a major part
(and I moved from Atari TOS to IBM to Mac without problems because of
TeX), but I have to admit that with XeTeX this may have changed
(albeit quite possibly temporarily) since È am not aware of a similar
implementation on Windows. I could be wrong though, I don't really
keep up with developments.

I write most stuff in Ulysses, export to LaTeX via their export
facility, and the output is CRC. Ulysses + TeXshop is a wonderful
combination (although I do sometimes miss the macros of Alpha).

Willem

[Eve Fogarty]

Graham,

 

I clearly confused what you were saying. I am checking out Lyx and appreciate your patience with me. Seems as though our discussion has broadened and a lot of information has become available about various programs. I see this as a good thing (-: Again, I wish you luck with your pursuits and hope Beamer does become readily useable for you.

 

Eve

[Graham Smith]

Eve,

I think it is very easy to get confused with all this, but as you say the thread had developed into covering several interesting things.

Graham

[Silke Schneider]

I am a social scientist and hardly ever have equations in my papers. But
tables usually, which look very good in LaTeX (apart from everything else
looking better in LaTeX, too, and BibTex being more reliable, functional and
affordable than EndNote*). It's also working in a plain text file that I
like, without worrying (with few exceptions) about formatting. I have also
tried integrating my workflow using Scrivener, but this is only nice for
producing first drafts.

Another drawback is that most journals in my field don't accept LaTeX for
the submission of the final manuscript.

Silke

*EndNote was actuallly one of the reasons for giving up on Word for my main
work. It once shifted all citations one citation backward in a document
(from web forums I found that this happened to others, too, and it happened
to a friend of mine as well, but there is no fix for it other than going
back to a backup). In order to prevent this from happening, turning off
"instant formatting" was advised if I remember right.

> Von: Eric Durbrow <eric.d...@comcast.net>
> Antworten an: <The-Efficie...@googlegroups.com>

[Eric Durbrow]

So far there are at least two problems (in my experience) for using
LyX/LaTeX/etc for academic writing:

1. It does not seem to support revision tracking in Microsoft Word.
2. I am not confident that it can accurately output to .doc files
(e.g. endnotes, references, tables) as mentioned by Silke.

Can any one correct me on the above? These seem to be "deal-breakers".

Advantages:
1. Free.
2. Good for long documents.
3. Beautiful documents.
4. Sophisticated for math/physical science.
5. Documents can be read in a text editor so you are likely to be
able to read files ten years from now.

[Graham Smith]

Eric,

Although, Lyx does have revision tracking it does not support MSWord revision tracking.

I'm a fraid that my experience in sharing anything other than simple documents between Word and other word processors has always been a failure. Some are better tha others, but none work 100%. 

Of course this applies to Word files as well, In co-authoring a book, my co-author was forced to upgrade to Word 2003, from Word 2000, because I upgraded and we were getting weird formatting issues and lost characters/graphics. And now that he has upgraded to Word 2007, and saving as Word 2003, I am having problems properly reading his files as I am still on Word 2003. Further confused by me now using Word 2008 on the Mac, which seems to have introduced new problems. The whole thing is a nightmare.

I simply avoid Word as much as possible except when forced.

Graham

[ariew]

Dear Eric and Graham and others enjoying this thread,

Eric hits the nail on the head with the major drawbacks with using
LaTeX in social sciences and the humanities (I am a philosopher of
science). At first I was happy with my routine. I use Scrivener with
Multiple-Mark Down, the latter is very simple to use and makes very
easy conversions to LaTeX (I use TeXshop). For bibliographies I use
Bookends that works well with Scrivener. I sent out a beautiful
manuscript to my editors who promptly asked me to convert to Word.
Ugh. Precious research hours were wasted.

I am interested in Graham's experience with Scrivener.

Word has taken over the publishing world in humanities. I would like
to stick to my routine--especially since I like to write in rtf or
even txt, but unless version control improve and more publishers
accept LaTeX documents, I fear I will be stuck with Word, regardless
of the problems (as Graham reports) it causes.

Any other alternatives?

Thanks,

André Ariew
Department of Philosophy
University of Missouri-Columbia

[willem]

Ulysses allows you to export in Word format.

However, it is not easy to go back to Ulysses if you make changes in
Word, and it is also less suited to collaborative work. Ulysses does
not support revision tracking itself either. But it is useful if you
have to submit something in rtf or doc format, while usually prefering
LaTeX. These output options make it versatile. And I can confirm that
it works very reliable. All files are saved in rtf and txt versions,
so they remain accessible down the line.

I tend to make tables outside Ulysses, so if you have many equations
and the like, Ulysses may not suit you. (I just create separate
inputfiles for tables, which I draft in TeXshop; I have no experience
with equations). Otherwise, it is an ideal tool to avoid distraction
(you do not focus on lay-out and yet you have the best possible output
quality), and has a wonderful filter & collection system for various
documents within a project. It is a great tool for long projects,
involving many files. It is not free but there is an academic discount
(it was 50% when I purchased it.)

Sorry for intruding on the LyX-discussion - LyX never appealed to me,
I still prefer the raw code when I need it. But then again, I don't do
the equations ;)

On Feb 28, 7:23 pm, Eric Durbrow <eric.durb...@comcast.net> wrote:
> So far there are at least two problems (in my experience) for using  
> LyX/LaTeX/etc for academic writing:
>
> 1. It does not seem to support revision tracking in Microsoft Word.
> 2. I am not confident that it can accurately output to .doc files  
> (e.g. endnotes, references, tables) as mentioned by Silke.
>
> Can any one correct me on the above? These seem to be "deal-breakers".
>
> Advantages:
> 1. Free.
> 2. Good for long documents.
> 3. Beautiful documents.
> 4. Sophisticated for math/physical science.
> 5. Documents can be read in a text editor so you are likely to be  
> able to read files ten years from now.
>

> Eric Durbrow Ph.D. eric.durb...@comcast.net

[willem]

But doesn't Scrivener allow export in RTF? Or do these publishers not
accept RTF...? (You could use Mellel, of course, to change RTF to
Word, or even Word itself.)

ariew wrote:
> Dear Eric and Graham and others enjoying this thread,
>
> Eric hits the nail on the head with the major drawbacks with using
> LaTeX in social sciences and the humanities (I am a philosopher of
> science). At first I was happy with my routine. I use Scrivener with
> Multiple-Mark Down, the latter is very simple to use and makes very
> easy conversions to LaTeX (I use TeXshop). For bibliographies I use
> Bookends that works well with Scrivener. I sent out a beautiful
> manuscript to my editors who promptly asked me to convert to Word.
> Ugh. Precious research hours were wasted.
>
> I am interested in Graham's experience with Scrivener.
>
> Word has taken over the publishing world in humanities. I would like
> to stick to my routine--especially since I like to write in rtf or
> even txt, but unless version control improve and more publishers
> accept LaTeX documents, I fear I will be stuck with Word, regardless
> of the problems (as Graham reports) it causes.
>
> Any other alternatives?
>
> Thanks,
>

> Andr� Ariew

[Jan Erik Moström]

Silke Schneider <schneid...@googlemail.com> 08-02-28 20.07

>Another drawback is that most journals in my field don't accept LaTeX for
>the submission of the final manuscript.

"My" journals/conferences usually requires PDFs ... perhaps
yours as well?

jem

[Graham Smith]

André,

Did you really mean the comment about my experiences with Scrivener?  I only use it for some initial drafting and haven't really fully exlplored it. It shows great promise.

As there are many options for marking up PDFs, many PDF conversion tools, as PDFs look like the finished document , as it is multiplatfom and as it is an ISO standard, then I think we should be pushing publishers to accept PDFs. As many do of course.

This would give us the freedom to use our first choice of writing tool.

Graham

[Graham Smith]

Yes, RTF and indeed Word.

Graham

[Graham Smith]

Just when you thought this thread was finished, I have now found S5.

http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/s5/

This is an HTML based presentation tool, that uses CSS and Javascript to runs PowerPoint like presentations in any browser.

There is an option to add text that isn't included in the presentation but is includes in a printed outline of the presentation.

To make it portable you need to move all the folders that come with S5 to a USB stick or have them on the server where you store your presentation.

You are however writing your presentation in HTML, and if you want to make any major changes you need to understand CSS.

But you seem to end up with truly portable presntation, and a detailed printed handout.  Additionally, as I have been investigating accessibiity requirements, HTML is the most accessible of formats for those with special needs and viewing on screen.

I admit, I still like the idea of beamer but S5 looks really useful.

Graham

On 21/02/2008, Graham Smith <myot...@gmail.com> wrote:

Given lecture material has three components:

1. Slides for digital projection (preferable PDFs rather than PowerPoint or Keynote)
2. Lecture notes to support what I need to say and remember
3. Lecture handout

I regularly update all three, but I am finding keeping all three in sync to be a bit tedious.

I'm not sure what the solution is, but what I am visualising is some sort of single document, where you  write the lecture handout. I could then update this with new information between presenting the lecture.

Then do something like tagging  key phrases that I want as the headline for each slide, and then somehow export these as individual slides.  Then tag key facts and phrases that I want for the lecture notes that could be printed out to accompany the slides.

But having said that,I can see reasons why, if even possible, this wouldn't work because the sides would still need images or figures added. Plus it doesn't  build in a way of storing info that I "might" want to add, but not sure yet.

Does anyone have a clever approach to dealing with this.

Thanks,

Graham

[Silke Schneider]

No, most don't accept pdf (only for first submission for reviewing
sometimes, but if the paper is accepted you still have to hand in a .doc
file). I bet there is a split in the Social Sciences also with Economics
being more LaTeX-friendly (or even requiring LaTeX), and most others still
stuck in word.

I tend to think about preferring journals for their acceptance of pdf/tex in
addition to word files...

Silke

> Von: Jan Erik Moström <mos...@gmail.com>
> Antworten an: <The-Efficie...@googlegroups.com>
> Datum: Fri, 29 Feb 2008 07:32:30 +0100
> An: <The-Efficie...@googlegroups.com>
> Betreff: Re: Improving presentation management and production
>
>