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Re: Slide show presentations

  • To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
  • Subject: [mg45088] Re: [mg45066] Slide show presentations
  • From: christopherpurcell <christopherpurcell at mac.com>
  • Date: Tue, 16 Dec 2003 06:21:22 -0500 (EST)
  • References: <200312151248.HAA00522@smc.vnet.net>
  • Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com

My most disastrous presentation began when I arrived a comfortable 20 
minutes early to test
my Toshiba (windows) portable with an unknown projector. I just got my 
first opening mathematica "slide" on the screen looking good when 
someone
came running in yelling that he had to test his laptop, right now, as 
he was the first speaker of the session. Of course after much
fiddling to get this guy hooked up, it turned out he was in the wrong 
room, and it was now show time for me.
Having projected my title "slide" perfectly I had no inkling that 
trouble was brewing. My text and equations projected fine, but the 
graphics (containing
all my nice animated results) were displayed as empty boxes, which 
greatly impressed the audience. The next day, I returned to the lecture 
hall and
reverse engineered the situation and found that had I not panicked, one 
more press of the function key F5 would have
caused it to try another resolution/refresh rate that would have 
enabled the projector to synch the graphics and the text.
So the moral of the story is your rehearsal should include the entire 
show, or failing that, at least "slides" that contain both text and 
graphics, and when all else fails toggle your laptop's external monitor 
function key (probably F5).

PS.  the zoom button on the bottom left corner (of most notebooks by 
default )
(or the Format, Magnification menu item) is great for last minute 
resizing in response to complaints
from the back row.

Christopher Purcell
Sensors & Actuators Group
DRDC-Atlantic, 9 Grove St., PO Box 1012,
Dartmouth NS B2Y 3Z7 Canada
Tel 902-426-3100 x389
Fax 902-426-9654

On Dec 15, 2003, at 8:48 AM, Goyder Dr HGD wrote:

> I make a slide show using Mathematica and the Mathematica Slide Show 
> palette
> on my laptop at home.
> I then fly with my laptop to the other side of the world, plug into the
> projection system and attempt to show my presentation.
>
> The problems
> 1. How do I ensure that my presentation will fit the screen?
> 2. How do I know what font size to use when making the presentation?
> 3. How do I stop myself putting too many lines on a slide when 
> constructing
> the slide?
> 4. How do I stop myself making graphics that are too wide or too tall?
>
> In general how do I know that when I make my presentation it will be 
> the
> same size as the screen onto which it is projected and not either a 
> postage
> stamp size or too big for the screen?
>
> Microsoft PowerPoint is good at giving you a preview and then mapping 
> the
> slide you have made into the projection system (but a disaster with
> equations). Mathematica does not enable you to do this.
>
> The only rule for making slides, I know, is that you can have a 
> maximum of
> ten lines per slide.
>
> I can vary the following:
>
> My font size. Note difficulty with text in graphics.
> My screen area - using the Windows Control Panel / Display Properties /
> Screen Area (typical size 1024 by 768).
> The size of the notebook - bottom bar of window.
>
> Should I use the Mathematica SlideShow environment or is the 
> Mathematica
> Presentation environment better?
>
> What approach should I take if I am not to have a presentation 
> disaster?
>
> Thanks for any comments.
>
> Hugh Goyder


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