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I've been a LaTEX/Markdown person for years before converting to Powerpoint/Keynote. If you want your slides to be minimal and clean and you don't have a lot o

I've been a LaTEX/Markdown person for years before converting to Powerpoint/Keynote. If you want your slides to be minimal and clean and you don't have a lot of time to do, then Markdown works. To me, over time I am convinced that having the ability to do animations to explain technical ideas is great. While it's not impossible to do fly in/out/moving animations in LaTEX, presentation software makes it ten times easier to maintain. I think that not everything is best explained in code. Sometimes you need pictures/animations to convey the ideas.

mathnmusic 8y ago
> animations to explain highly technical ideas Do you have an example slide? Just trying to understand what you mean.
- jimmies 8y ago
  Yeah, this illustration is what can be done in PPT in 5 minutes to explain how adding more layers/data can filter noise from signal, when I don't think it will take 5 minutes for me to write a LaTEX code that does the same. That's not counting Powerpoint does allow me to draw lines and stuff easily on a canvas. If I want to do it in LaTEX, I probably will need to draw that diagram on a separate program and import it back. https://giphy.com/gifs/4GXOwrfX1p9SuzbGzS/fullscreen https://giphy.com/gifs/4GXOwrfX1p9SuzbGzS/fullscreen Sorry, the slide is clipped for some reason, but that's because I don't know how to configure OBS. It's not the best illustration ever, but you probably get the idea. Here is an animation that isn't mine and I think it's really well done to explain a hard idea (not necessarily in PPT): https://youtu.be/Tfh0ytz8S0k?t=123 https://youtu.be/Tfh0ytz8S0k?t=123
  - blt 8y ago
    I agree. I've given talks on pretty math-heavy ideas but they can still usually be explained visually in a way that is significantly easier to understand without losing fidelity. I love LaTeX and Beamer for pure text/math, but once you want animated slides, or even including videos/gifs, PDF gets flaky fast. Keynote and PPT are pretty powerful tools. (also, the 8-bit guy is great!)
    - sorenjan 8y ago
      Steven Wittens have written about this and his MathBox^2. I've never used it, and from the examples it looks like it might be too much work for most presentations to be worth it, but the examples are pretty impressive. http://acko.net/blog/mathbox2/ http://acko.net/blog/mathbox2/ https://gitgud.io/unconed/mathbox https://gitgud.io/unconed/mathbox
  - mathnmusic 8y ago
    Oh, I'm already completely convinced about the expressive power of animations. Just wasn't sure how much is possible with PPT/Keynote. Could 3Blue1brown videos be made in Keynote? But I can definitely see your point. :-)

mathnmusic 8y ago

> animations to explain highly technical ideas Do you have an example slide? Just trying to understand what you mean.

jimmies 8y ago
Yeah, this illustration is what can be done in PPT in 5 minutes to explain how adding more layers/data can filter noise from signal, when I don't think it will take 5 minutes for me to write a LaTEX code that does the same. That's not counting Powerpoint does allow me to draw lines and stuff easily on a canvas. If I want to do it in LaTEX, I probably will need to draw that diagram on a separate program and import it back. https://giphy.com/gifs/4GXOwrfX1p9SuzbGzS/fullscreen https://giphy.com/gifs/4GXOwrfX1p9SuzbGzS/fullscreen Sorry, the slide is clipped for some reason, but that's because I don't know how to configure OBS. It's not the best illustration ever, but you probably get the idea. Here is an animation that isn't mine and I think it's really well done to explain a hard idea (not necessarily in PPT): https://youtu.be/Tfh0ytz8S0k?t=123 https://youtu.be/Tfh0ytz8S0k?t=123
- blt 8y ago
  I agree. I've given talks on pretty math-heavy ideas but they can still usually be explained visually in a way that is significantly easier to understand without losing fidelity. I love LaTeX and Beamer for pure text/math, but once you want animated slides, or even including videos/gifs, PDF gets flaky fast. Keynote and PPT are pretty powerful tools. (also, the 8-bit guy is great!)
  - sorenjan 8y ago
    Steven Wittens have written about this and his MathBox^2. I've never used it, and from the examples it looks like it might be too much work for most presentations to be worth it, but the examples are pretty impressive. http://acko.net/blog/mathbox2/ http://acko.net/blog/mathbox2/ https://gitgud.io/unconed/mathbox https://gitgud.io/unconed/mathbox
- mathnmusic 8y ago
  Oh, I'm already completely convinced about the expressive power of animations. Just wasn't sure how much is possible with PPT/Keynote. Could 3Blue1brown videos be made in Keynote? But I can definitely see your point. :-)