[Tex/LaTex] Beamer: Short section titles in Headline

beamerheader-footer

I have a beamer template for a presentation. In this template, the headline shows the section name and the subsection to which the current slide belongs to.
However, even if I have defined a short title as in

\section[Short title]{The very long title that surely is way too long}

the headline always shows the long title.

Here is the code from the style file which shows the section name

    \pgftext[at=\pgfpoint{\beamer@headline@lmargin}{-0.55\beamer@headline@height},left,center]{%
        \begin{beamercolorbox}[dp=0.5ex]{section in head/foot}
            \shadowtextline{\insertsection}
        \end{beamercolorbox}
    }

So my question: Is there any other command for \insertsection in order to show the short title? (I assume no, as googleing it I didn't really find anything). Additionally, does it matter if not all sections have short titles?

Best Answer

Your outer theme should use \insertsectionhead instead of \insertsection:

\documentclass{beamer}
\begin{document}

\section[Short section 1 title]{Long section 1 title}

\begin{frame}
  \frametitle{F1}
  Long title: \insertsection

  Short title: \insertsectionhead
\end{frame}

\section[Short section 2 title]{Long section 2 title}

\begin{frame}
  \frametitle{F2}
  Long title: \insertsection

  Short title: \insertsectionhead
\end{frame}
\end{document}

enter image description here

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