Note: The content of this help to TexPoint is in most part still up to date.
However, there might be some small differences in the Mac version or versions later than
2.0.3 (especially regarding the new configuration, but I hope it is mostly self expaining).
Overview
1. TexPoint inline mode
In inline mode you can
write Latex macro invocations and definitions along with your regular text.
Then at a press of a key or a menu button the macros are expanded. For example,
you can write
\alpha_0 \otimes \beta_{\approx1} \rightarrow^\alpha \Gamma
Then you press a button and
the above text is changed in place to the corresponding Latex formula (the
version showed below is a bitmap. The one you will get in PowerPoint will be
constructed using individual characters.)
Features in the inline mode
- Your presentations are standard PowerPoint
presentations. To view or edit the presentation on another machine you can
either tell TexPoint to embed all the fonts is uses in the presentation or
you can install TexPoint on the other machine.
- Your formulas flow with the text and are
fully editable.
- You can use almost all symbol
macros defined by standard Latex and by AMSTEX.
- You can define per-presentation macros
with arguments with the \newcommand macro
- There are predefined macros for
controlling the font, the face (bold, italic, underline), and superscript
or subscript of portions of text
- With one click, you can expand all the
text located in the current selection, including that contained inside
tables or inside groups of shapes
- You can restrict the expansion to the
currently selected text range
- Needs just 1 simple installation step
taking only a few minutes. In particular you do not need to have Latex or
Ghostscript installed on your machine since TexPoint includes a simple
Latex interpreter.
Limitations of the inline mode
- The inline mode can position characters
only one following another. (An exception is that the baseline can be
lowered or raised to get subscript and superscript position.) This is a
PowerPoint limitation and it is not yet possible to overlap characters or
to stack them.
- Otherwise said, all the inline mode does
for you is to provide all of the AMSTEX symbols and to save you a lot of
slow trips to the "Insert/Symbol" or "Format/Font"
menus. I have found that this is quite a substantial help because it
allows almost the entire editing to be done from the keyboard.
- After expansion, the Latex source is lost.
However, I didn't find this to be a problem because the result of
expansion can be edited as usual or further macros can be written in the
middle of the resulting formulas to correct the mistaken part. If you notice
the problem immediately after expansion you can undo it (CTRL-Z, Command-Z)
the expansion, edit the source and re-interpret it.
- To get access to all of the Latex symbols
you must install four new fonts on your computer. This takes only a mouse
click. However, if you use those fonts you must be careful to save your
presentation with fonts embedded if you intend to send it to somebody else
who does not want to install TexPoint. (This can be automated, see below.)
2. TexPoint display mode
Sometimes you really want
the full power of Latex. That is what the display mode gives you. In
display mode you write arbitrary Latex source which is automatically processed
and the first page of the resulting document, clipped at the bounding
box, is inserted on the slide. Later you can change the source and the
display will change accordingly.
Features in display mode
- Anything that Latex can produce on one
page you can include on your slide with just a few clicks. In particular,
you can copy-and-paste Latex code from your papers into your
presentations.
- The source for each TexPoint display is
kept inside your PowerPoint presentation, so you don't have to worry about
dangling file references or cluttered directories.
- You can copy-and-paste TexPoint displays
even between presentations. Each display carries its source with it.
- You can start editing the source for a
display with a simple double-click on the display or a specialized context
(right-click) menu
- Displays can also be processed as regular
images (e.g., to change size, contrast, brightness, borders, animation,
etc.). In addition the settings for contrast, brightness and magnification
are remembered and used when you regenerate the bitmap after editing the
Latex source.
- You have a choice whether to use
monochrome or colored displays.
- You can tell TexPoint to make the bitmap
transparent or to color it with the same color scheme that the host slide
is using.
- You can send the presentation to anybody
and they will be able to see it and to print it, but if they do not have the
TexPoint add-in installed they will not be able to view or edit the
embedded Latex source.
Limitations of the display mode
- TexPoint displays are bitmaps, which means
that if you magnify them a lot you will start to see pixelation. To
control that you can tell TexPoint to use up to 2400dpi resolution but in
my experience even 300dpi bitmaps show just fine on the screen. For
printing however you might need a higher resolution bitmap. Starting in version 2.0 you can
also have outline displays (Win) which can be scaled to any
resolution without showing pixelation.
- The display mode requires Latex and
Ghostscript to be installed on the computer. Fortunately, they are easy to
install (described on the installation page).
- You can paste TexPoint displays on any
application that supports ActiveX (including other Office applications).
However, you will not be able to view or edit the source anymore if the
host application is not PowerPoint. This might be fixed in the
future.
Usage
Configuration
You should start by configuring TexPoint. Starting with Version 2.5 the configuration possibilities are greatly extended:
You can configure TexPoint for the current presentation (as it was the only possibility before 2.5) and "globally" on
your computer (for all Users). For configuration open the TexPoint/Configure dialog [press ALT-X-C in the english PowerPoint version for Windows]
You must have a presentation active or you will get an error message.
The following things can be configured:
- Whether to use AMS fonts or just the
standard System fonts. By default TexPoint uses the AMS and Latex Fonts.
If you configure TexPoint to avoid using AMS fonts then next time it does
inline expansion it will try to find the symbols in the Windows standard
fonts. Note that the Windows/Mac symbol font contains only a small fraction
of the AMSTEX symbols. Note also that this feature takes effect only on
future expansions.
Advantages of using AMS fonts
- You have access to all the symbols that Latex
has access to. This includes the fonts cmsy, msam, msbm, and stmary (the
last three are AMS fonts)
Disadvantages of using AMS fonts
- Your symbols might not show
properly on another machine. To avoid this problem you can do one of the
following:
- Install TexPoint on the other machine, or
- Install just the fonts that come with
TexPoint on the other machine, or
- Be careful to save your presentation
with fonts embedded - PowerPoint on Mac platform does not support font embedding.
Go to File/Save As/Tools/Embed True Type Fonts, or
- You can configure TexPoint to turn on
font embedding for this presentation (Windows only)
- If you embed fonts your presentations
will be bigger (on average by about 100k)
- Since the AMS fonts use rather thin
strokes I find it useful to use their bold face version. Click the
appropriate check box if you want this behavior. I'd be grateful
if some font guru would find a way to thicken the strokes in these fonts.
I can even provide a good Font editor for this purpose.
- You can tell TexPoint whether it should
turn on embedding of fonts the next time it expands an AMS symbol. You can
also do the font embedding by hand (see above).
- You can configure the default Latex source
that should be used when TexPoint creates a display. (Read about displays
below). If all of your displays use some common setup then you can enter
it here. This is a sequence of shell commands separated by ";".
Each of the commands is executed in sequence. The word "$(base)"
is replaced with the base name of the display source (as selected in the
Edittex dialog box) and the word "$(res)" is replaced by the
resolution. It is best if you do not change this setting.
- You can
configure the command used to start an external editor for editing your
display sources (use of such an editor is optional; TexPoint provides a
primitive editor that I have found to be sufficient). This is a string
that will be used as a command line after substituting all occurrences of % in it with the name of the file
to be edited. If you use full pathnames, you should use backslashes not
slashes! Examples of valid strings are "notepad %" or
"C:\Programs\emacs-21.2\bin\emacs %".
- You can
configure the name of the Ghostscript command to use for producing the
display bitmaps. By default this is "gswin32c", which assumes
that you have installed the AFPL version of Ghostscript as described in
the installation section. It also assumes that this command can be found
in the PATH. You can provide here a complete path to the command or even a
different name. For example, if you want to use the cygwin version of
Ghostscript (assuming it is installed and in the PATH) you can set this
name to "gs".
- You can define new macros for the Inline
mode. The scope of these macros is the current presentation only. However,
you can copy-and-paste the macros to other presentations. To define a
macro you can use the \newcommand macro with a syntax similar to that of
Latex (no optional arguments):
- \newcommand{macroname}{nrargs}{body} :
this defines the given macro whose scope will be the entire presentation.
The body can contain occurrences of #1 ... #9 to refer to the arguments.
You can redefine built-in macros and redefinitions shadow previous
definitions. One of the basic uses of \newcommand is to define synonyms
for the built-in commands.
- You can select the font size and the
default width and height of the edit boxes with Latex source to be used in
display mode and the default bitmap format, resolution and transparency
settings. These settings are used every time you make a new display.
The inline version of
TexPoint is an interpreter for the following language:
T
|
::=
|
macro ARG* T | ^
ARG T | _ ARG T | other T
|
ARG
|
::=
|
{ T } | other | macro
|
macro
|
::=
|
\[a-zA-Z]+
|
other
|
::=
|
anything
other than ^ or _ or \ or CR
|
Just like in TeX, macros consume their arguments and
their occurrence is changed in place to their expansion. The expansion is then
itself subject to macro expansion. Also like in TeX, macro names cannot contain
digits, thus a digit can follow immediately a macro name. However, unlike TeX,
macros
do not consume a space that follows their name. If you want to
avoid the space in the expansion write \foo\-. (\- is a predefined macro that
expands to nothing and is handy for terminating macro names.). Another
difference from TeX is that you should not use $ to delimit the math text to be
expanded. Macro arguments cannot span multiple paragraphs.
Some useful macros:
- \- : expands to nothing.
Useful for terminating macro invocations
- \font{fontname} ARG : fully expands
ARG and then changes the expansion to the given font. All font names that
appear in the font selection combo box can be used
- \fontsize{size} ARG: fully expands ARG and
then changes the expansion to the given font size.
- \bf ARG : like \font but
changes face to bold
- \em ARG : like \font but changes face to
italic
- \underline ARG : like \font but changes
face to underline
- ^ ARG : like \font but changes to
superscript (nested superscripts have no effect)
- _ ARG : like \font but changes to
subscript (nested subscripts have no effect)
- \fontchr{fontname}{asciicode} : expands to
the given character in the given font.
- virtually all of the macro names that define symbols in standard Latex
and AMSTEX are predefined using the \fontchr macro. Take a look at TexPointdemo.ppt to see all the symbol macros
that are defined. This can be done at any point by going to the menu
TexPoint/Show Symbol Macros
- \cmr{xxx} typesets xxx using Latex
Computer Modern font
- \cmm{xxx} typesets xxx using Latex
Computer Modern Math font
Invocation
- Place the edit cursor inside a text box
and then go to "TexPoint/Texify". Or press ALT-X-X.
- If you select only a text range, then only
that range is processed
- If you select a number of shapes, then all
the text contained in one of the selected shapes is processed. This
includes recursively all the text in table cells and inside grouped
shapes.
- Don't forget that you can define new
macros. For example, you find yourself using \leftarrow a lot and would
like to abbreviate it \la, you can do TexPoint/Configure (ALT-X-C) and add
to the initialization code section
- \newcommand{la}{0}{\leftarrow}
- As another example, you can define a
denotational-semantic function \ds{e} as follows
- \newcommand{ds}{1}{\llbracket{#1}\rrbracket}
(the actual argument is surrounded by braces to prevent it from
interfering with the parsing of either one of the bracket commands)
- I find it very useful to do most of my
editing without using the mouse. Here are a few useful commands. (Most of
them are available even without TexPoint)
- CTRL-M - new slide
- CTRL-ENTER - move to the next placeholder
(i.e. from the title to the body of the slide)
- TAB - add a level of indentation (if
bullets or numbering is on)
- SHIFT-TAB - remove a level of indentation
- ALT-X-B - toggle bullets on-off for the
selected paragraphs
- ALT-X-N - toggle numbering on-off for the
selected paragraphs
- ALT-X-F - revert the selected text to the
default font for the presentation.
- ALT-X-M – change the font for the
selection to Latex Computer Modern math font (cmmi10)
- ALT-X-L - change the font for the
selection to Latex Computer Modern regular font (cmr10)
- To create a new Tex display, go to "TexPoint/New Tex
Display" (or ALT-X-D) and a dialog box will appear. The main entry is
for the source of the Latex file that will generate the display. This
entry is initialized to the text that you selected during TexPoint
configuration. Keep in mind that only the first page of the resulting
document is used. This source is kept with the display so you can safely
copy and paste the display in other presentations. It is advisable to use
the \documentclass{slides} so you get the font sizes appropriate for
presentations and \pagestyle{empty} so you avoid adding page numbers to your
displays.
If
you press Finish Later then all your changes are saved but the display
is not regenerated. If you press Cancel all changes are discarded. If
you press Make bitmap then a Latex file containing the source is created
and processed in the same directory with the presentation. You should see an
MS-DOS window running your command. If you selected Pause in the Debugging tab
then the window will wait for you to press a key before it closes. In versions of TexPoint prior to 1.5.3 you
should not press CTRL-C or kill the MSDOS window running the script. Press x
instead to tell Latex to finish!. Better yet, upgrade to TexPoint version 1.5.3
or above.
The
name of the file is constructed from the base name which you can select in the Debugging textbox along with the
extension .tex. This base name does not have to be unique. (If you want to keep
the file make sure you check the "Keep Files" checkbox.) Then
the script TexPoint/tex2bmp is started to process the source into a
bitmap.
Edit window format. You can resize the source text box by dragging with the mouse
the lower-right corner of the window. You can select the font you want to use
for displaying the Latex source and whether to use word wrap or not (both of
these controls are in the Display
tab). Note that this has nothing to do with the font that Latex itself will use
when processing your source.
Next
we describe the functions of each control. The controls are organized in three
tabs. Note that all of the settings that you select are remembered for each
display individually. For new
displays these settings are initialized as specified in the TexPoint
configuration dialog box (those are per-presentation settings).
The
Bitmap tab:
The Source tab:
- You can select the Font size to be used
in the source edit box
- You can select whether to use WordWrap
in the source edit box
- You can resize the source edit box by dragging its lower-right corner
The
Debugging tab:
- You
can select Pause to prevent the
MSDOS window to close so that you can see what commands were executed
- You
can specify the base name of the Latex source file and the bitmap that should
be used.
- You can specify Keep Files to prevent
the deletion of the bitmap and the Latex source files. They are left in the
same directory with the presentation and the base name for the bitmap is that
selected in the adjacent text box.
- The
Interactive and Timeout features are deprecated starting with version 1.5.3.
Errors. If one of the steps in processing
the .tex file and generating the bitmap results in an error you will get a
dialog box that allows you to cancel the process or to retry it. In the latter
case the source will reflect your last failed modifications. If you press Cancel
now, the source for the display is reverted to its value before the edit
process was initiated. Press Finish Later to store the changes to the
source without regenerating the bitmap.
- To edit an existing display, right-click on it and select
"TexPoint Properties", or just double-click (Windows) on it.
- You can invoke
an external editor (using the command that you configure in the TexPoint
configuration dialog box) instead of editing in the provided text box.
- You can resize a display but use
only the corner anchors to ensure that the aspect ratio is
preserved.
- You can process a display just like any
other picture. Click on a display to select it and then right-click on it
to get a specialized menu. You can copy and paste display even between
presentations. They will carry with them the source.
Using EMF (Outline) displays (introduced in Version 2.0 - Windows only)
Starting in version 2.0 of TexPoint you can
create displays that are not bitmaps but outline graphics format (like PDF or
Postscript). The actual graphics format is called EMF (Extended Metafile). To
create such a display you must make sure to have installed the "Outline
displays" feature of TexPoint (available and installed unless prohibited
by you, starting with version 2.0). If you have this feature installed then you
will see the EMF option in the "Bitmap format" combo box when you
create or edit a display.
TexPoint uses a modified version of the
PSTOEDIT program to translate the Postscript files generated by Latex into EMF.
The modifications were made by James O’Brien and are required for proper
operation in the presence of Latex fonts. The program pstoedit.exe is installed
in the TexPoint directory. (To see
the generated EMF file you can check the "Debugging/Keep Files" box
and then look into the directory that contains the presentation. You will see
that these files are much smaller than the bitmap files for the same display.)
The way EMF files work is that instead of
containing a bitmap rendering of the characters that make up your display they
contain references to characters in True Type (.ttf) versions of the Latex
fonts. The catch is that for the displays to show correctly those fonts must be
installed in your system. These fonts have names of the form (cm*.ttf,
msam*.ttf, msbm*.ttf) and you will see them both in the TexPoint/fonts/outline
directory and in the "Select Font" dialog box in most of your text
editing programs. Furthermore, these fonts must be present on any machine on
which you want to view the presentation. One option around this issue is to
embed the fonts into the presentation: in PowerPoint, click File/Save
As/Tools/Save Options, and the click the "Embed True Type fonts".
The pstoedit tool will fail to create the
EMF file if it contains fonts that are not installed in the system. In that
case you will see a dialog box listing the fonts that are missing. TexPoint
gives you the option to let pstoedit to substitute missing fonts. Just click
the "
Allow font substitution"
checkbox.
EMF displays are transparent by default
and cannot be made otherwise.
I think that outline displays are MUCH
better than bitmap ones. The drawback is however that you must have the Latex
fonts installed, which pollutes the font selection dialog box and creates
portability problems for presentations.
In version 2.0 I have included only a
limited selection of Latex fonts. Please let me know if you need others.
Office 2000 users: PowerPoint 2000 forgets to close EMF files that it loads. This
prevents TexPoint from deleting the EMF files and requires it to create new EMF
files with new names. The new names are formed using the value you have in the
Debugging pane (default is txp_fig) along with a random numeric suffix. It is
Ok to delete these files manually after you exit PowerPoint. Their contents is
already included in the presentation.