[Tex/LaTex] Showing margins/frames in beamer slides

beamergeometry

With a regular article/report/… class, you can use the showframe package to draw outlines of where the various regions of the page lie. I cannot get the same functionality with beamer, however. Using geometry with its showframe option similarly does not work.

How can I get this functionality with beamer?

MWE:

\documentclass{beamer}

%\usepackage[showframe]{geometry}  % Doesn't work
\usepackage{showframe}             % Doesn't work

\begin{document}

\begin{frame}{Slide Title}
\centering
Centered Text
\end{frame}

\end{document}

Edit:

A similar question is posed here that asks for a diagram depicting the layout of the page with lengths of various parameters given. The \layout package gives this output when applied to the MWE:

layout

While this output gives margin information and general layout information, it does not give the visual output that I am looking for, with boxes overlaid on my own content.
I am less interested in seeing the value of margins and other lengths than I am in visualizing the fit of my own content on the slide and seeing how close the boxes actually are to content. This is why I desire functionality more close to what the showframe package would provide.

Best Answer

I applied to beamer the answer at Displaying layout marks in a document set with different layouts, which gives some of the information you seek. It shades the main text block, that margin block, the header block, and the footer block.

However, the beamer frame sits atop the underlying page dimensions, and so things like the frame title are not captured by the normal page text blocks. Further, things like \marginpars can be done in beamer, but not inside a frame. Lastly, there are some page dimensions such as \textheight which could not be set in the preamble without being immediately overwritten. Interestingly, I discovered that when not in a frame, beamer will page break and move residual text to the next page (something it does not do inside a frame).

\documentclass{beamer}
\usepackage{everypage}
\usepackage{xcolor}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\usepackage{calc}
\usepackage{fancyhdr}
\pagestyle{fancy}
% In beamer, these changes can be made in the preamble
\addtolength{\topmargin}{1pt}
\addtolength{\headsep}{5pt}
\addtolength{\oddsidemargin}{-4pt}
\addtolength{\marginparwidth}{20pt}
\addtolength{\marginparsep}{-3pt}
\addtolength{\textwidth}{-5pt}
%
\fancyhf{}
\fancyhead[C]{This is also a header test}
\fancyfoot[C]{This is also a footer test}
\AddEverypageHook{\hbox{\color{blue!40}\smash{\hspace{\oddsidemargin}%
  \rule[-\textheight-\headsep-\headheight-\topmargin]{\textwidth}{\textheight}%
}}}
\AddEverypageHook{\hbox{\color{blue!30}\smash{\hspace{\oddsidemargin}%
  \rule[-\headheight-\topmargin]{\textwidth}{\headheight}%
}}}
\AddEverypageHook{\hbox{\color{blue!20}\smash{\hspace{\oddsidemargin}%
  \rule[-\textheight-\headsep-\headheight-\topmargin-\footskip]{\textwidth}{\headheight}%
}}}
\AddEverypageHook{\hbox{\color{blue!10}\smash{\hspace{\oddsidemargin}%
  \hspace{\textwidth}\hspace{\marginparsep}%
  \rule[-\textheight-\headsep-\headheight-\topmargin]{\marginparwidth}{\textheight}%
}}}
\begin{document}
% In beamer, these changes have no effect in preamble
\addtolength{\textheight}{-40pt}
\addtolength{\headheight}{15pt}
\addtolength{\footskip}{15pt}
%
\begin{frame}{title of the slide}
\lipsum[3]
\end{frame}
\clearpage
\lipsum[3]\marginpar{this is a margin test}

\end{document}

This is a slide within a frame:

enter image description here

This is the next slide, not in a frame:

enter image description here

EDITED to account for the 2018.12.01 TeX kernel changes to \smash.

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] How to add custom beamer actions that change an argument

It appears to me Till got confused: your third example shouldn't work at all if \action wrapped its argument in the actionenv, not passing it as an argument to actioncommand.

Using

\newcommand<>\gray[1]{%
  \textcolor#2{gray}{#1}%
}

appears to work. (FYI: the ?all:2! that you observe was the < all:2 > specification that was not being taken up because no command \gray existed to parse it. (The inverted ? and ! happen to sit in the spaces for > and < if you don't use the T1 fontencoding. Even more tangentially, if you ever see ?From in a scientific paper and have to laugh, you know enough about TeX and RFC822 to qualify as a hopeless geek.)

[Tex/LaTex] beamer: frame without decorations, with custom margin

The bounty has already been awarded, but here's the beamer way:

beamer uses six horizontal lengths:

\beamer@leftsidebar and \beamer@rightsidebar store the (horizontal) sizes of the side bars.
\beamer@leftmargin and \beamer@rightmargin store the distance between sidebar and text.
The macros \Gm@lmargin and \Gm@rmargin store the distance from the edge of the paper to the edge of the text.

Thus the sum \beamer@leftsidebar and \beamer@leftmargin is exactly \Gm@lmargin.

Thus, if you wish to put some text right next to the left edge of paper with the proper separation, you need a horizontal skip equal to \beamer@leftsidebar to get there.

\documentclass{beamer}
\usetheme{Berkeley}
\usepackage{lipsum}

\newlength\leftsidebar
\newlength\rightsidebar
\makeatletter
\setlength\leftsidebar{\beamer@leftsidebar}
\setlength\rightsidebar{\beamer@rightsidebar}
\makeatother

\begin{document}

\begin{frame}[t]
\lipsum[4]
\end{frame}

\hoffset=-\leftsidebar
\begin{frame}[plain,t]
\lipsum[4]
\end{frame}

\end{document}