beamertitles
I'm trying build my own theme to use for work-related presentations in beamer. I'm not so familiar with how to write the themes, I'm customizing a title page manually at the moment.
What I want to do is have fine control over where text goes on the page when the \titlepage command is issued. I want to shift it rightwards and downwards from where beamer is choosing to put it.
I've isolated the problem down to the infolines outer theme and specifically the line:
\setbeamersize{text margin left=1em,text margin right=1em}
towards the end. What seems to be happening is that the note templates aren't quite configured correctly with regard to changing the margins. Some length that the itemize environment uses to figure out its width is not getting set correctly when using notes. As I've not much idea which lengths these are, and which beamer mucks about with, I've not much of an idea as to how to properly fix this.
However, I have a way to improperly fix this. What I found was that by putting the note within a minipage environment of the right width worked. That reset all the correct widths to the right ones without my having to know any of the 'orrible details! Of course, that's a bit annoying to put in every time so it's possible to force it by modifying the beamer template for the notes page. Copying out the default one, and adding the necessary lines, I arrived at:
\makeatletter
\defbeamertemplate{note page}{infolines}
{%
{%
\scriptsize
\insertvrule{.25\paperheight}{white!90!black}
\vskip-.25\paperheight
\nointerlineskip
\vbox{
\hfill\insertslideintonotes{0.25}\hskip-\Gm@rmargin\hskip0pt%
\vskip-0.25\paperheight%
\nointerlineskip
\begin{pgfpicture}{0cm}{0cm}{0cm}{0cm}
\begin{pgflowlevelscope}{\pgftransformrotate{90}}
{\pgftransformshift{\pgfpoint{-2cm}{0.2cm}}%
\pgftext[base,left]{\footnotesize\the\year-\ifnum\month<10\relax0\fi\the\month-\ifnum\day<10\relax0\fi\the\day}}
\end{pgflowlevelscope}
\end{pgfpicture}}
\nointerlineskip
\vbox to .25\paperheight{\vskip0.5em
\hbox{\insertshorttitle[width=8cm]}%
\setbox\beamer@tempbox=\hbox{\insertsection}%
\hbox{\ifdim\wd\beamer@tempbox>1pt{\hskip4pt\raise3pt\hbox{\vrule
width0.4pt height7pt\vrule width 9pt
height0.4pt}}\hskip1pt\hbox{\begin{minipage}[t]{7.5cm}\def\breakhere{}\insertsection\end{minipage}}\fi%
}%
\setbox\beamer@tempbox=\hbox{\insertsubsection}%
\hbox{\ifdim\wd\beamer@tempbox>1pt{\hskip17.4pt\raise3pt\hbox{\vrule
width0.4pt height7pt\vrule width 9pt
height0.4pt}}\hskip1pt\hbox{\begin{minipage}[t]{7.5cm}\def\breakhere{}\insertsubsection\end{minipage}}\fi%
}%
\setbox\beamer@tempbox=\hbox{\insertshortframetitle}%
\hbox{\ifdim\wd\beamer@tempbox>1pt{\hskip30.8pt\raise3pt\hbox{\vrule
width0.4pt height7pt\vrule width 9pt
height0.4pt}}\hskip1pt\hbox{\insertshortframetitle[width=7cm]}\fi%
}%
\vfil}%
}%
\vskip.25em
\nointerlineskip
\begin{minipage}{\textwidth} % this is an addition
\insertnote
\end{minipage} % this is an addition
}
\makeatother
\setbeamertemplate{note page}[infolines]
and that seemed to work fine!
Here's half an answer.
The reason that it is half an answer is because of the way that beamer builds a frame. In essence, the stuff on a frame can be divided in to "frame" and "content". The "frame" component is actually typeset by hooking in to the headers and footers bit of TeX's output routine. This ensures that it goes behind the actual content. The "content" is then rendered afterwards. The "frame" component consists of all the stuff like backgrounds, sidebars, and so forth. Interestingly, the frame title is part of the "content".
What I've worked out so far is the order in which the "frame" stuff is laid out, and (mostly) what it consists of. To follow the trail, you need to look at the definition of \ps@navigation in beamerbaseframecomponents.sty and search for everywhere it has a \usebeamertemplate (though you have to be on the lookout for calls to other functions that also call templates).
Exactly what each piece is and how it is to be used is covered in the manual (section 8.2) as Matthew says, but that doesn't tell you the order (well, not obviously) and on the basis that a picture is worth a thousand words anyway, I thought that the following pictures might help.
First, a frame itself:
And now the exploded diagram, at least as far as the "frame" part goes.
It's not quite the same as I didn't take apart the templates and reuse them, but hopefully each bit is unique enough to show what it is.
With regard to the content, then there's less need to do the "explosion" because stuff tends not to get put on top of other stuff, so then it's just a question of knowing what can go in to a frame. The exception is, perhaps, the frame title which one could consider as part of the "frame" part but which, by reason of implementation, is in the "content" part. So for that, reading the beamer user guide is probably as good as you're going to get.
I shan't put the code for doing the above. It isn't pleasant! Nor is it readily adaptable to other situations.
Best Answer
You could use
\defbeamertemplateto define your own title page template. There you may use the commands\inserttitle,\insertauthor,\insertdateetc. to insert those values, also don't forget to use the predefined font and color values.Here is a compilable example. Of course you can use
\centering,\vfill,beamercolorboxetc. but I keep it simple for the purpose of demonstration.