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Downloaded the Beamer package, but can't use it

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Downloaded the Beamer package, but can't use it

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radissthor

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Post # 274900

Downloaded the Beamer package, but can't use it

Hi everyone,

I downloaded the LaTeX-Beamer package from the repositories, but I can't figure out how to use it. I can't use it in Lyx, nor in TexMaker. The package says it is to be used with pdflatex or dvips, but none of those programs are available in the repositories.

I'm a bit of a noob in TeX, so I might be missing something here. Any help is much appreciated.

Cheers :)

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Tue May 24, 2011 12:21 pm

timkb4cq

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Post # 274901

Re: Downloaded the Beamer package, but can't use it

pdflatex is a command line tool included in the package texlive-latex-base, so you likely already have it.

As I understand it, (and I don't use latex so insert grain of salt here) Beamer is a class file for the Latex language that adds new Latex commands to be used for presentations. You still write your pages in the same way as any other LaTex document, and use pdflatex to convert the LaTex file to a PDF file of the presentation.

Google for latex-beamer examples to see how to use it. The examples should make more sense to you than they do to me, since I don't know the LaTex language.

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Tue May 24, 2011 12:54 pm

timkb4cq thanked by: radissthor

radissthor

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Post # 274993

Re: Downloaded the Beamer package, but can't use it


	timkb4cq wrote: pdflatex is a command line tool included in the package texlive-latex-base, so you likely already have it. As I understand it, (and I don't use latex so insert grain of salt here) Beamer is a class file for the Latex language that adds new Latex commands to be used for presentations. You still write your pages in the same way as any other LaTex document, and use pdflatex to convert the LaTex file to a PDF file of the presentation. Google for latex-beamer examples to see how to use it. The examples should make more sense to you than they do to me, since I don't know the LaTex language.

Thanks for the advice. I was finally able to run the beamer class. It turned out that the file beamer.layout was not present in my isntallation of LyX, which is strange because I have 1.6.6 and that file is included since version 1.4

Anyway, I'll describe what I did so it can help other Mepis users that might run into the same problem.

First, I downloaded the official beamer package from here.

There, there was a documentation file which said the following:


	Code: When you ask TEX to use a certain class or package, it usually looks for the necessary files in so-called texmf trees. These trees are simply huge directories that contain these files. By default, TEX looks for files in three different texmf trees: ∙ The root texmf tree, which is usually located at /usr/share/texmf/, /usr/local/texlive/texmf/, c:\texmf\, or c:\texlive\texmf\. ∙ The local texmf tree, which is usually located at /usr/local/share/texmf/, /usr/local/texlive/texmf-local/ c:\localtexmf\, or c:\texlive\texmf-local\. ∙ Your personal texmf tree, which is usually located in your home directory at ~/texmf/ or ~/Library/texmf/. You should install the packages either in the local tree or in your personal tree, depending on whether you have write access to the local tree. Installation in the root tree can cause problems, since an update of the whole TEX installation will replace this whole tree. Inside whatever texmf directory you have chosen, create the sub-sub-sub-directory texmf/tex/latex/beamer and place all files of the package in this directory.

So what I didi was uncompress the package in /usr/local/share/texmf/tex/latex/beamer.

Later, the manual said:


	Code: Finally, you need to rebuild TEX’s filename database. This is done by running the command texhash or mktexlsr (they are the same). In MiKTEX package manager and TEX Live tlmgr, there is a menu option to do this.

I run the texhash command as sudo, and it worked fine.

Then, I tested the package and it said that it couldt not load any beamer files. This was the output:


	Code: The layout file requested by this document, beamer.layout, is not usable. This is probably because a LaTeX class or style file required by it is not available. See the Customization documentation for more information. LyX will not be able to produce output.

The documentation says the following:


	Code: lyx For usage of the beamer class with LYX, you have to do all of the above. You also have to make LYX aware of the file beamer.layout. This file is not part of the beamer package since it is updated and managed by the LYX development team. This means that in reasonably up-to-date LYX versions this file will already be installed and nothing needs to be done.

So I went to the official LyX webpage and downloaded the file beamer.layout.
Then I copied that file to


	Code: /usr/share/lyx/templates

did the texhas command again, closed Lyx and then tried to run a beamer layout file.

From /usr/share/lyx/templates


	Code: [Hernan@Inspiron1525 templates]$ lyx beamer-conference-ornate-20min.lyx ../../src/LayoutFile.cpp(278): Existing textclass beamer is redefined by /usr/share/lyx/templates/beamer.layout

And I was able to open beamer files! :D

I hope this info is helpful to those users of Mepis that want to try out beamer in LyX.

Cheers

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Wed May 25, 2011 12:25 pm

radissthor thanked by: lucky9

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