I would like to customise the note pages in Beamer to show:
- the current frame that they refer to with its number,
- the next frame of the presentation with its number,
- the section and subsection,
- the notes themselves.
The reason for this is to make a useful presenter view for presentations on a secondary screen (using SplitShow on a Mac). I have noticed a considerable demand for the same so I am hoping to release the solution as a package or perhaps contact the Beamer maintainer and offer it for incorporation.
The the only problem yet is that due to my inexperience in programming for LaTeX, I can not figure out how to insert the content of next frame. The current frame (or slide) is inserted as follows (beamerbasenotes.sty):
\newcommand{\insertslideintonotes}[1]{{%
\begin{pgfpicture}{0cm}{0cm}{#1\paperwidth}{#1\paperheight}
\begin{pgflowlevelscope}{\pgftransformscale{#1}}%
\color[gray]{1}
\pgfpathrectangle{\pgfpointorigin}{\pgfpoint{\paperwidth}{\paperheight}}
\pgfusepath{fill}
\color{black}
{\pgftransformshift{\pgfpoint{\beamer@origlmargin}{\footheight}}\pgftext[left,bottom]{\copy\beamer@frameboxcopy}}
\end{pgflowlevelscope}
\end{pgfpicture}%
}}
I do not understand what does \copy\beamer@frameboxcopy
represent.
Could you please provide me with a command definition that would produce the same with the next frame instead of the current one?
The intended result:
Best Answer
Here's a sneaky way to accomplish this without using any external tools. It's a "proof of concept" more than a complete solution, but I think it would be usable if a little rough around the edges.
It uses an enhanced
pgfpages
. The enhancement means that whenpgfpages
comes to lay out its logical pages on a physical page, it can do so on more than one physical page. So what we do is we gather together the notes page and the next frame page then typeset them as usual: notes followed by frame (since the frame is the next one), but with a little extra: we also put the frame page in the top corner of the notes page.Modulo a little trickery to ensure that we start and end at the right points, and that we actually don't want to use the full frame but only its contents (ie not the background), this isn't overly complicated. It does mean we get two extra slides: one at the start and one at the end, but even that could be dealt with without too much extra hassle.
The enhanced
pgfpages
is calledpgfmorepages.sty
(CTAN and github). With that, the following code works-for-me:Of course, one ought to hide that horrible stuff in another
.sty
file. Also, I've no doubt that there are better layouts - I just hacked the current one that puts the image of the previous slide in the top corner.This produces the following.
Edit 2014-09-20
In response to anderfo's comment (which I never got round to looking at) and a similar question by email, I proffer the following. First, I should say that as it has been a long time since I looked at this code, I find I no longer fully understand it! However, by my usual 'hack and see' approach, I've managed to get something that (I think!) simulates the "show notes on second screen=left" layout. It also corrects the offset that Jim points out (again by "magic numbers", not by understanding what's going on).
(One minor annoyance is that on the last slide, a "next slide" still appears. I've not figured out how to get rid of that.)