[Tex/LaTex] Beamer Presentation+Laser cursor option

beamerpdfpointerpresentations

A desperate Math educator here. With covid19 the teach from home is turning into a sour experience for me. Usually, I prepare all of my documents and presentations on latex. I am on Windows 10 (64-bit), I use TeXstudio (2.12.22) and have the MiKTeX (2.9) package.

My issue is that when doing PowerPoint presentation through beamer, the pdf file I obtain does not provide for a laser cursor when I am in presentation mode like for instance, Microsoft PowerPoint would. I have tried to change my cursor via the windows system to emulate a laser pointer instead of the arrow. It was successful until I went in presentation mode(i.e. in fullscreen) on my pdf file. I always end up with that hand with an arrow in the middle which is not ideal because I am recording my presentation and sending it to my students. I have looked at an alternative pdf reader in Sumatra pdf but not much luck there too.

Right now I am either forced to convert my beautiful presentations to pictures then feed it to PowerPoint (this is quite some work) or use online websites that convert pdf to ppt files (that's easier, but not ideal the quality is just horrible). After a couple of weeks at this pace, I am starting to burnout. Any suggestion or unknown feature that exists in latex that could allow me to get the laser pointer when doing a presentation with my pdf files.

Best Answer

The stupid hand symbol in FullScreen mode of Acrobat Reader is a nuisance.

I filed a feature request to Adobe several years ago in the hope to get something more suitable. Even an ordinary arrow would fit better than the hand. Alas, it was ignored. In older AR versions it was possible to replace the compiled-in hand icon with an arrow icon using a resource editor. But this doesn't seem to be possible anymore.

Update: cursor hidden after 3 s timeout; brighter laser dot.

As a workaround I'd suggest to compile the LaTeX source to SVG instead of PDF and use a web browser for display, such as Chromium, Chrome or Firefox. They all provide a FullScreen mode that can be accessed with F11. Moreover, these browsers are available on many platforms and for all major OS. As a bonus, they allow for embedded multimedia playback everywhere, which is not a widely spread capability among PDF viewers. And, most importantly, they all have the usual arrow in presentation mode.

With SVG, as Martin puts it in his comment, an arbitrary image file can be used as a cursor, such as this one , which was made with TikZ.

pdflatex laserdot
convert -geometry 20 -density 150 laserdot.pdf laserdot.png

laserdot.tex:

\documentclass[tikz,border=1pt]{standalone}

\usetikzlibrary{fadings}
\tikzfading[name=fade out, inner color=transparent!0, outer color=transparent!20]
\tikzfading[name=fade out 2, inner color=transparent!0, outer color=transparent!100]

\begin{document}
\tikz {
  \shade [inner color=yellow, outer color=red, path fading=fade out] (0,0) circle (5pt);
  \shade [inner color=white, outer color=yellow!90!white, path fading=fade out 2] (0,0) circle (4pt);
}
\end{document}

In SVG, laserdot.png is set as cursor icon by means of the CSS attribute cursor:

svg { cursor: url('laserdot.png') , auto ; }

Complete example:

latex beamer-example
latex beamer-example
dvisvgm --bbox=papersize --font-format=woff2 --zoom=-1 --page=-  beamer-example

beamer-example.tex:

\documentclass[dvisvgm,hypertex,aspectratio=169]{beamer}

\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{shapes.geometric,calc}

\usefonttheme{serif}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
% PageDown, PageUp key event handling; navigation symbols <--, -->
% setting laserdot.png as cursor icon
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
\usepackage[totpages]{zref}
\usepackage{atbegshi}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usepgflibrary{arrows.meta}
\setbeamertemplate{navigation symbols}{}
\def\navBtnSize{9pt}
\def\navBtnLnWd{1.6pt}
\AtBeginShipout{%
  \AtBeginShipoutAddToBox{%
    \special{dvisvgm:raw
      <style> svg {cursor: none} </style>
      <defs>%
        <script type="text/javascript">%
        <![CDATA[%
          var svgRoot=document.getElementsByTagName('svg')[0];
          var cursorTimer;
          document.addEventListener('mousemove', function(e){%
             svgRoot.style.cursor='url("laserdot.png"), auto';
             try{clearTimeout(cursorTimer);}catch(err){};
             cursorTimer=setTimeout(function(){svgRoot.style.cursor='none';},3000);
          });
          document.addEventListener('keydown',function(e){%
            if(e.key=='PageDown'||e.key=='ArrowDown'||e.key=='ArrowRight'){%
              \ifnum\thepage<\ztotpages
                document.location.replace('\jobname-\the\numexpr\thepage+1\relax.svg');%
              \fi%
            }else if(e.key=='PageUp'||e.key=='ArrowUp'||e.key=='ArrowLeft'){%
              \ifnum\thepage>1
                document.location.replace('\jobname-\the\numexpr\thepage-1\relax.svg');%
              \fi%
            }%
          });%
        ]]>%
        </script>%
      </defs>%
    }%
  }%
  \AtBeginShipoutUpperLeftForeground{%
    \raisebox{-\dimexpr\height+0.5ex\relax}[0pt][0pt]{\makebox[\paperwidth][r]{%
      \color{structure!40!}%
      \ifnum\thepage>1%
        \href{\jobname-\the\numexpr\thepage-1\relax.svg}{%
          \tikz{
            \filldraw[black!0!] (-1pt,-\dimexpr\navBtnSize/2+1pt\relax)
              rectangle (\dimexpr\navBtnSize+1pt\relax,\dimexpr\navBtnSize/2+1pt\relax);
              \draw[{Straight Barb[round]}-,line width=\navBtnLnWd] (-1pt,0)--(\navBtnSize,0);}}%
      \else%
        \textcolor{lightgray}{\tikz{
          \filldraw[black!0!] (-1pt,-\dimexpr\navBtnSize/2+1pt\relax)
            rectangle (\dimexpr\navBtnSize+1pt\relax,\dimexpr\navBtnSize/2+1pt\relax);
            \draw[{Straight Barb[round]}-,line width=\navBtnLnWd] (-1pt,0)--(\navBtnSize,0);}}%
      \fi\hspace{0.5ex}%
      \ifnum\thepage<\ztotpages%
        \href{\jobname-\the\numexpr\thepage+1\relax.svg}{%
          \tikz{
            \filldraw[black!0!] (-1pt,-\dimexpr\navBtnSize/2+1pt\relax)
              rectangle (\dimexpr\navBtnSize+1pt\relax,\dimexpr\navBtnSize/2+1pt\relax);
              \draw[-{Straight Barb[round]},line width=\navBtnLnWd] (-1pt,0)--(\navBtnSize,0);}}%
      \else%
        \textcolor{lightgray}{\tikz{
          \filldraw[black!0!] (-1pt,-\dimexpr\navBtnSize/2+1pt\relax)
            rectangle (\dimexpr\navBtnSize+1pt\relax,\dimexpr\navBtnSize/2+1pt\relax);
            \draw[-{Straight Barb[round]},line width=\navBtnLnWd] (-1pt,0)--(\navBtnSize,0);}}%
      \fi%
      \hspace{0.5ex}%
    }}%
  }%
}%
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

\begin{document}

\begin{frame}{Some geometric shapes}

\begin{tikzpicture}[x=2cm,y=2cm]
\foreach \a in {3,...,8}{
\node[regular polygon, regular polygon sides=\a, fill=red,
inner sep=0.3535cm] at (\a,2) {};
}
\foreach \a in {9,...,14}{
\node[regular polygon, regular polygon sides=\a, fill=blue,
inner sep=0.3535cm] at ($(\a,0)-(6,0)$) {};
}
\end{tikzpicture}

\end{frame}

\end{document}

More examples for beamer-class presentations in SVG:

Using the animate package without Adobe

http://mirrors.ctan.org/macros/latex/contrib/media4svg/example/beamer-example-1.svg (embedded video)

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] presentation: option screen or prepress in ps2pdf

You can find all options of ps2pdf here. The PDFsettings part is below:

-dPDFSETTINGS=configuration
    Presets the "distiller parameters" to one of four predefined settings:

        * /screen selects low-resolution output similar to the Acrobat Distiller "Screen Optimized" setting.
        * /ebook selects medium-resolution output similar to the Acrobat Distiller "eBook" setting.
        * /printer selects output similar to the Acrobat Distiller "Print Optimized" setting.
        * /prepress selects output similar to Acrobat Distiller "Prepress Optimized" setting.
        * /default selects output intended to be useful across a wide variety of uses, possibly at the expense of a larger output file.

So in principle /screen will give the smallest output. It's already enough for a projector.

[Tex/LaTex] Using \only in beamer presentation

Your aim seems to be to present several different policies, while leaving the general description of the first two items as a constant. You can use a combination of \alt and \only `:

\documentclass{beamer}

\begin{document}

\begin{frame}[t]
\frametitle{Heuristic Policies}

\begin{columns}

\column{0.5\textwidth}
\begin{itemize}
\item<1-> These are methods aiming to give a good but not necessarily optimal solution to a problem.
\item<2-> There exist a number of such policies for bandit problems.
\alt<1-9>{
\item<3-9> Greedy policy:
\begin{itemize}
\normalsize
\item<4-9> choose arm with greatest expected reward
\item<5-9> ignores variability in prior distribution
\item<6-9> quite good for Bernoulli bandits, but less effective for normal bandits
\end{itemize}
}{\only<10-14>{\item<10-> Next policy:
\begin{itemize}
\normalsize
\item<11-14> comment 1
\item<12-14> comment 2
\item<13-14> comment 3\par
\rule{0pt}{2.7cm}
\end{itemize}}
\only<15-18>{\item<15-> Another policy:
\begin{itemize}
\normalsize
\item<16-18> Another comment 1
\item<17-18> Another comment 2
\item<18-18> Another comment 3\par
\rule{0pt}{2.7cm}
\end{itemize}}
}
\end{itemize}

\column{0.3\textwidth}
\vspace{-25pt}
\uncover<7->{\begin{figure}
\begin{center}
\includegraphics[height = 2.7cm, trim=-1cm 0cm 0cm 0cm,clip=true,width=3cm]{example-image-a}
\caption*{$(\alpha,\beta) = (1,1)$}
\end{center}
\end{figure}}
\vspace{-25pt}
\uncover<8->{
\begin{figure}
\begin{center}
\includegraphics[height = 2.7cm, trim=-1cm 0cm 0cm 0cm,clip=true,width=3cm]{example-image-a}
\caption*{$(\alpha,\beta) = (6,5)$}
\end{center}
\end{figure}}

\column{0.2\textwidth} 
\only<9>{$\Rightarrow$ play this arm} 
\only<13-14>{$\Rightarrow$ play this arm with probability $\varepsilon$\vspace{80pt}} 
\only<14>{$\Rightarrow$ play this arm with probability $1-\varepsilon$} 
\end{columns} 
\onslide<10>{\null}
\end{frame}

\end{document}

To avoid the jumping of the first common two items I used some "invisible" rules.

An animated image of the resulting document:

enter image description here

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] presentation: option screen or prepress in ps2pdf

[Tex/LaTex] Using \only in beamer presentation

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