rbbeamer - ruby-beamer

rbbeamer is a preprocessor script to convert a structured file with informations about your slides into a .tex file. If pdflatex is installed, rbbeamer can go on and start pdflatex to build your PDF.

Most of work is done by the LaTeX-Beamer-package. But writing TEX-Files for beamer can be a little bit annoying if you usually use only a small (and everytime the same) part of the things beamer is capable to do. So if you need individual slides using all beamer-capabilities, you should use beamer directly by writing a .tex-file.

rbbeamer enables you (right now) to access just a small part of beamer-capabilities. But you can input your data very fast with nearly no hazzle about formatting and counting clicks and all this stuff.

Let's say we need a couple of slides about rbbeamer. Open an ASCII-Editor of your choice and enter:

#sd|My Tests with rbbeamer  | John Doe | April 2013
#toc|Agenda
#sec|Introduction
#fi| My first slide
#i| rbbeamer is for setting up slides very fast
#i|a tool for people who need lots of beautiful slides
#i| Have a closer look
#Fi

#sec|Details
#fd| Advantage and disadvantages
#d| advantage| you only type what is needed
#d|disadvantage | you have to read a \emph{small} README.
#Fd

#sub|This is my subsection
#fx|Starting an empty frame
#bd|starting a description
#d|description|bd starts a description-environment
#d|second|this is just an example
#Bd
#bi|starting an itemize
#i|bi starts an itemize-environment
#i|this is just an example too
#Bi
#Fx

Save this file as demo.rbt (rbt is default extension for rbbeamer-files). Now start rbbeamer:

if pdflatex is installed:

rbbeamer demo.rbt -p 

or, if you just want to create a TEX-File for later use

rbbeamer demo.rbt

The resulting .TEX file will create a presentation with a title page, a table of content titled "Agenda" and two slides with data. Both slides will step from one item to the next by mouseclick

Install with gem install rbbeamer.

rbbeamer compiles .rbt-files into .tex-files. If you want to create your PDF, you should also have a latex-installation (otherwise rbbeamer will just create a TEX-file that you can use to work with at your own). If latex is not in your $PATH, you can specify a path in ~/.rbbeamer/rbbeamer.conf. Default binary-name ist pdflatex.

rbbeamer ist a script written in Ruby. You need a running Ruby-Installation (tested: 1.9.3, 2.0.0p0), most modern operating systems include one. rbbeamer ist developed and tested under Linux - it should run under MAC OS/X and Windows too - but I didn' t test it until now. Drop me a mail if you have additional info.

Creating pictures you will need graphviz in your path.

Commands start with a "#" as first char in a line. Every line not starting with # is ignored (so a blank as the first char means: this is a comment). You can use this to specify additional informations not shown on slide or just to deactivate a command for testing purposes. The end of a command is defined by line break or seperator-char (default: |)

#sd|<Title Of Presentation> | <Author> | <Date> [ | sources]

start definition-command: Defines a titlepage with three entities. If you want to use citations with biblatex, just give a fourth option with name of .bib-file (specify without extension), i.e. #sd| My Title Of Presentation | John Doe | April 2013 | sources. rbbeamer will then try to include a file named sources.bib.

#toc [| Agenda | <DEPTH>]

Table-Of-Content: includes a TOC-page based on defined sections and subsections. Optional: you can specify a title (default: Agenda) and a depth for building TOC (default: 1).

#sec|<yourtitle>
#sub|<yourtitle>
#ssub|<yourtitle>

Defines a section, subsection or subsubsection (are your sure using subsubsections in a presentation?) named <yourtitle>.

#fi|<yourtitle>

Defines a frame (one slide) with different items using itemize. <yourtitle> will be the title of frame.

#i| <content>

Defines one item within a frame started with #fi. This item will be visible after a click in presentation (if you didn't use handout-option, see later)

#Fi

Closes a frame started with #fi.

#fd|<yourtitle>

Defines a frame (one slide) with different items using description. <yourtitle> will be the title of frame.

#d| <keyword> | <content>

Defines one item within a frame started with #fd. This item and its description will be visible after a click in presentation (if you didn't use handout-option, see later).

#Fd

Closes a frame started with #fd.

#fx|<yourtitle>

Defines a frame (one slide) with no content. <yourtitle> will be the title of frame. You can use this to define a frame at your own (see #[-command).

#Fx

Closes a frame started with #fx.

#bi|<yourtitle>

Starts a new block inside a fx-frame named <yourtitle>. Alle entries in block should follow with #i-command (itemize).

#Bi

Closes a block started with #bi.

#bd|<yourtitle>

Starts a new block inside a fx-frame named <yourtitle>. Alle entries in block should follow with #d-command (description).

#Bd

Closes a block started with #bd.

#[|content

This command just copies all content of this line into resulting .TEX-file. Lets say, you want to specify a section with an additional short title. This you cannot do with #sec-command. Instead you can use #[|\section[Short Title]{Really Long Title}. Resulting .TEX-file will include this line: \section[Short Title]{Really Long Title}

#{|

If you need more flexibility in defining your slides, you can use this command. All lines following this command are copied 1:1 to resulting .TEX-file until you close this command. Let's assume you need a frame with special content. Design your frame with beamer. If you are done with this, copy your beamer-sourcecode into your rbt-file between a #{| and a #} line. So from this time on your special designed tex-code will be copied into tex-file.

#}

Closes the copy-mode.

#dig{|<filename> [|scale]

Using Graphviz-package you can include pictures into your presentation. With this command you define the filename being used for building and saving your picture. Have a look into example.rbt to find a graphviz-picture. Don' t forget to define an empty frame (using #fx) before defining a graphviz-picture. If you omit scale-option, 1.0 will be inserted as scale: Graph width will be 100% of textwidth.

#input|<filename>

If you have large presentations, sometimes it is easier to use different source-files for different parts. Using input-command you can include another .rbt-file into your presentation (and yes, this one also can input a third one and so on).

#attn

Using #attn one can mark some slides as very important. This mark is an red triangle at lower left corner (on handouts) or a small blue dot at same corner (on slides, it is only a signal for your talk).

Starting rbbeamer at least you will have to specify your .rbt-file to compile. But beside this you can specify a lot of options. Try option --help or -x to see a short description.

  --seperator, -s <s>:   use this pattern as seperator (default: |)
       --logo, -l <s>:   Logo-File (without extension) for slides (default:
                         logo)
            --pdf, -p:   Start pdflatex after creating tex-file
        --handout, -h:   build a handout (no animations in pdf, add _handout
                         to filename)
      --theme, -t <s>:   Beamer-Theme to use (see Beamer-Doc for more info)
                         (default: Luebeck)
--handoutcolor,-n <s>:   Colortheme for printing handouts (use 'handoutcolor = ' to deactivate this option) (default: dove)
      --babel, -b <s>:   Language-option for babel-Package (default: english)
    --backend, -a <s>:   Backend for biblatex setting up references (default:
                         bibtex)
 --configfile, -c <s>:   Use this file as configfile (default:
                         ~/.rbbeamer.conf)
--deleteworkfiles, -d:   Delete work-files from pdflatex:
                         .aux,.blg,.nav,.snm,.toc,.bbl,.log,.out,.run.xm,.tex,.eps,.run.xml,-blx.bib
--writeconfigfile, -w:   write default config into ~/.rbbeamer.conf
                         (overwrite)
          --debug, -e:   Start in debugging mode
       --debugpdf, -u:   Show pdflatex-output during compilation
           --help, -x:   Show all options (this page)

During startup rbbeamer tries to find config-dir (Linux: ~/.rbbeamer). If it doesn't exist, it will be created. You can save some files used by a majority of your presentations in this dir (i.e. logo-files, bibtex-sources). rbbeamer tries to find this files in this dir, if you do not specify another directory. In my case, I store my bibtex-sourcefile with all entries I usually cite from in this dir. So I don't have to bother with copies of this file in different directories.

In some cases you will prefer configs on a per-project basis. You can now use an additional config-file named .rbbeamer.conf in your working dir (where your rbt-files are stored. In this file you change perhaps your logo-file to a different one only used in this project. At startup rbbeamer will read global config file first and then tries to read a local config file in your working dir, which will overrule global settings.

Nearly all options regarding rbbeamer can be specified in command-line. But most times you don' t change your options. So ist is easier to use a config-file to save them. During startup rbbeamer sets all options to default values. If it finds rbbeamer.conf, options are overriden by those specified in config-file. If you also specified options in command-line, these values will override the former ones.

To create your global config-file, just specify all options needed for your work and add --writeconfigfile (or -w). rbbeamer will then create a config (Linux: ~/.rbbeamer/rbbeamer.conf) to save all options within. Next time just start rbbeamer and specify your .rbt-file. Thats it. You can edit your config-file with any editor.

handout = false
pdf = true
deleteworkfiles = true
debug = false
debugpdf = false
seperator = |
babel = english
addpackage = 
logo = rbb_logo
addpackage =
theme = Luebeck
handoutcolor = dove
latexpath = 
latexbinary = pdflatex
backend = bibtex

If you need more packages to be declared in your .tex-file, just use addpackage option:

rbbeamer.rb test.rbt --addpackage [myoption=true]{testpackage},{otherpackage}

or use addpackage-line in .rbbeamer.conf:

addpackage = [myoption=true]{testpackage},{otherpackage}

This will lead to an additional entry in resulting .tex-file like this:

\usepackage[myoption=true]{testpackage}
\usepackage{otherpackage}

rbbeamer is a preprocessor for creating TEX-files for LaTeX-Beamer. Copyright (C) 2013 Thomas Romeyke (rubybeamer at googlemail.com).

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.