[Tex/LaTex] How to preserve relative spacing when changing paper size in beamerposter. (margins too big)

beamerpostermarginspostersspacing

I recently made a poster in LaTeX using the beamerposter package, it was 48×36 inches, and came out great. I now need to re-print the poster in a smaller size. (36×24 inches)

I realize that this changes the aspect ratio, and I'll have to finagle the layout a bit – but before i can do that i need all of the columns and the spaces between them to be the right size. There are a number of \setlength commands at the top of the file, which I assumed would take care of this: 

\newlength{\sepwid}
\newlength{\onecolwid}
\newlength{\twocolwid}
\newlength{\threecolwid}
\setlength{\paperwidth}{48in}
\setlength{\paperheight}{36in}
\setlength{\sepwid}{0.024\paperwidth}
\setlength{\onecolwid}{0.22\paperwidth}
\setlength{\twocolwid}{0.464\paperwidth}
\setlength{\threecolwid}{0.708\paperwidth}
\setlength{\topmargin}{-0.5in}

When I make the \paperwidth anything other than 48, the paper size (in preview) does change, but the \sepwid width doesn't scale appropriately. Specifically, when I reduce the paper width to 36 inches, the columns end up being the correct size, but the space between them is closer to 0.1\paperwidth instead of 0.24\paperwidth, which results in huge spaces between columns.

What is LaTeX doing? How do I fix this?

…I also use the following packages in the poster: exscale, caption, subcaption, wrapfig, natbib

For a working example, download the zip file here: http://www.njohnston.ca/2009/08/latex-poster-template/, and change the dimensions in that example from 48×36 to 36×24.

Best Answer

It looks like \paperwidth and \paperheight are being redefined, but \textwidth and \textheight are not. You can get the columns to fit on the page if you use something like this.

\setlength{\paperwidth}{36in}
\setlength{\paperheight}{48in}
\setlength{\textwidth}{0.98\paperwidth}
\setlength{\textheight}{0.98\paperheight}

However, the headline is defined in beamerthemeconfposter.sty with a fixed width of 47in, so whereas the title text is centered the line underneath the header is not the correct length. (This can be more clearly seen if you try something like \setlength{\paperwidth}{60in}) Although not a very nice solution, you can get the correct 0.5in margins for the headline box if you redefine the headline as \hspace{0.5in}\begin{beamercolorbox}[wd=35in,colsep=0.15cm]{cboxb}.

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