Document Classes ⇒ Beamer Slides on Lower Left Corner of Page

[steve]

I have been creating presentations using the Beamer class, TeXnicCenter, and Windows XP for about a year with rarely an issue. I recently installed TeXnicCenter on a computer with Windows 7, and have come across an annoying issue. When creating postscript files (LaTeX -> PS) in Beamer on the Windows 7 computer, the slides appear on the bottom left corner of the page, rather than occupying the whole page in proper landscape mode.

This problem only occurs when creating postscript files on the Windows 7 computer. If I change the output profile to LaTeX -> PDF on the Windows 7 machine, the slides are correctly displayed.

Finally, using the LaTeX -> PS output profile on several different Windows XP computers, the slides are correctly displayed.

I have checked output profiles on both the Windows XP and Windows 7 computers and all settings are identical. Any assistance would be helpful.

[localghost]

The PS file is useless anyway. So why do you stick to it? The final output format of your presentation will be PDF. So why not compile with PDFLaTeX directly? And what happens if you convert from PS to PDF?


Thorsten

[steve]

Thorsten,

I'm using .eps graphics in my presentation. When I compile with PDFLaTeX directly, the graphics are not incorporated into the presentation.

This problem has become more interesting, and I'm not convinced that it's a function of Windows operating systems, but possibly resulted from recent MiKTeX installation. Using two separate Windows XP machines, I downloaded the most recent version of MiKTeX 2.8 onto one of the machines, and only that machine is causing the problem. The other machine with a MiKTeX 2.8 installation from about a year ago is producing output files as expected.

I'm using LaTeX -> PS -> PDF output profile in TeXnicCenter. On the older MiKTeX 2.8 ("good" machine), the .dvi file looks correct, the .eps file has the slides in the lower left corner, and the .pdf file looks correct. On the newer MiKTeX 2.8 ("bad" machine), the .dvi file looks correct, but both the the .eps and .pdf files have the slides in the lower left corner.


Steve

[steve]

Thorsten,

I found my error and corrected it. I will post a solution within the next hour.

Steve

[localghost]

[…] I'm using .eps graphics in my presentation. When I compile with PDFLaTeX directly, the graphics are not incorporated into the presentation. […]

EPS files can be converted to PDF. But this only pays if the files are originated in this vector format (i. e. by export from another program). Converted pixel graphics should be included in their original format. Beside PDF format PDFLaTeX also accepts JPG and PNG. You will get more information about graphics formats and conversion tools via forum search.

[steve]

This problem occurred after a recent installation of MikTeX 2.8 on a new computer using Windows 7 and TeXnicCenter 1 Beta 7.50. When compiling a beamer presentation with .eps graphics using the LaTeX -> PS -> EPS output profile, the resulting .pdf showed small landscape slides in the lower left corner of a full-sized portrait page.

Online searching revealed that other users experienced similar problems with beamer output, but the solutions that I found did not work for me. Furthermore, changing settings as recommended in the beamer user guide also yielded the same odd looking output.

In the end, I found a computer that produced the "correct" output files and compared profile settings between the "good" and "bad" machines. The problem occurred from the argument provided to the DviPs postprocessor executable file. Specifically, during TeXnicCenter setup, the output profile LaTeX -> PS -> PDF (Alt+F7 in TeXnicCenter), in the post processor tab of the "bad" machine was populated with the following argument to the dvips.exe executable file: -t a4 -P pdf "%Bm.dvi". The "correct" setting on the "good" machine was: -P pdf -R0 "%Bm.dvi". Once I made this adjustment, the output files behaved as expected.

I realize that this is a very specific solution to a very specific problem, but if anyone else encounters the problem using the same or similar software, then I hope that the solution will be of some use.

Steve

[frabjous]

Thanks for sharing!

[localghost]

No need to open a new thread. Instead you should have posted this solution in the original thread and mark this topic as solved according to the directions in my first reply. Therefore the topics have been merged and this topic has been marked as solved.

[gmedina]

Hi, Steve

...I'm using .eps graphics in my presentation. When I compile with PDFLaTeX directly, the graphics are not incorporated into the presentation...

TeX Live2010 automatically converts EPS files for inclusion with pdfLaTeX.