Latex Plugin For Powerpoint

One of the most annoying weaknesses of Apple Keynote, Microsoft Powerpointand most other slide making programs I know is making equations that lookas good as we are used to in LATEX. This set of tips will provide atleast a couple pathways for this process. There are many others and Iwelcome additional suggestions and support code. All the tools I mentionhere are either ubiquitous or have equivalents that are.

The best way to handle equations on the Mac is to use this outstandingutility available atpierre.chachatelier.fr/programmation/latexit_en.phpfrom PierrChatellier. The steps are easy and give you that one more bit ofjustification you were looking for to buy a Mac in the first place.

May 27, 2013 IguanaTex is a PowerPoint plug-in which allows you to insert LaTeX equations into your PowerPoint presentation. IguanaTex can also treat the equation as an ordinary PowerPoint image. Wiki This is just a small Latex Add-In for Powerpoint. It enables to add and edit Latex equations or symbols in a Powerpoint slide easily. The Add-In is based on ScintillaNET and supports syntax highlighting, code snippets etc. Insert LaTeX Equations into PowerPoint Presentation (PPT) with IguanaTeX (LaTeX Tips/Solution-43) - YouTube IguanaTex is a PowerPoint add-in which allows you to insert LaTeX equations into your. Below is a solution from Scott Hoge, who is a LaTeX whiz and wanted to find a nice way to use a Linux or Windows computer for making equations. Following the outline on Rob's page, one can generate the latex equations in a tex file, one equation per file. Then, run dvips with the -E option, to generate.eps output files.

  1. Download LaTeXiT from hereand install as per instructions.
  2. Launch LaTeXiT and set the following preferences:
    • Font size of at least 96--at least this is what I found makes nice looking slides.
    • Start sticking LATEX code into the input window and watch the magic appear in the graphics window above it.
    • Note: the ``Display' option works find for simple math that you enter without and begin{equation} while ``Text' works better with egnarray type things.
    • You can also set the equation text color for use on whatever background colour you anticipate on the slides.
    • When you have what you like in the graphics output window just drag and drop it into the Powerpoint/Keynote window. Shrink it to fit and you will have very nice quality output.

If you are stuck without a Mac (my condolences) there are other optionsthat are more tedious. The basic idea here is to use LATEX to make theequations and then grab them from the screen and convert them totransparent gif or png files so that they float over whatever background isin the Powerpoint slide. Here are the steps, which work only on a Unixcomputer as long as all the utilities required are available.

  1. Make a LATEX document with your equations. Use all the standard parameters and do not worry about font size or any other special considerations other than to avoid making the margins too wide. Err on the side of using
    eqnarray     to get a fairly short line length.
  2. Run LATEX on the file and then view the output using xdvi. If you plan to use a dark background on the slide template, I suggest using the -rv option in order to get white text on a dark background.
  3. In xdvi, adjust the zoom, or shrink factor to something in the range of 1-3. This will blow up the image of the equation and is the means by which you can balance resolution against image--and subsequently file--size in Powerpoint. You will just have to play with this so take one equation through the full process and see how it looks before doing more.
  4. Using some sort of screen capture program, for example Grab on the Macintosh or snapshot on an SGI, make an image file of the equation, with or without the equation number as you like. (Please send me pointers to other screen capture program on different platforms)
  5. Convert the image file to gif or png. There are numerous tools for this--the shareware program xvwill also do the conversion very nicely; ImageMagik has command line conversion tools that are very handy for scripting; and GraphicConverteris a great program on the Mac for all sorts of image conversion and manipulation.
  6. We are not done yet! The last trick is to give the gif/png file a transparent background--not a necessity, but a nice trick. To achieve this, I usually use GraphicConverterbut there are lots of other tools out there for this purpose.
  7. With this all complete, you should have one or more transparent gif/png files that you can move to your Mac or PC and insert (as graphics from file) into the Powerpoint presentation file. This will require some resizing of the image file so make sure to hold down the shift key when resizing to maintain the aspect ratio.

The programwww.technion.ac.il/~zvikabh/software/iguanatex/IguanaTex is billedas ``A Free LaTeX Add-In for PowerPoint'. I have not tried it but itcomes recommended (Thanks Nik Hoepker).

Below is a solution from Scott Hoge, who is a LaTeX whiz and wanted to finda nice way to use a Linux or Windows computer for making equations.

Following the outline on Rob's page, one can generate thelatex equations in a tex file, one equation per file.Then, run dvips with the -E option, to generate .eps output files.Then, use epstoolwww.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/gsview/epstool.htmto add in a BMP or TIFF preview image to the eps file.Word/Powerpoint can the load the .eps file.

for example:

eq1.tex: will produce an eps file with a tiff6p preview image at 300dots-per-inch, with 4 bit of anti-aliasing.(This could be scripted into a nice little tool, me thinks.)

For Word usage, the cool thing is that the bit map is used on thescreen preview, but the eps file is used when sent to a postscriptprinter (or ghostscript).

Apparently, epstool has been around since 1995, as part of thegsview package.

If you have additional suggestions for this process or other programs tosuggest for the conversions, please send me anemail


Rob MacLeod
(macleod@cvrti.utah.edu)

Getting Equations into Powerpoint/Keynote

This document was generated using theLaTeX2HTML translator Version 2008 (1.71)

Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996,Nikos Drakos, Computer Based Learning Unit, University of Leeds.
Copyright © 1997, 1998, 1999,Ross Moore, Mathematics Department, Macquarie University, Sydney.

The command line arguments were:
latex2html-split 3 -no_white -link 3 -no_navigation -no_math -show_section_numbers -local_icons equations-ppt

The translation was initiated by Rob Macleod on 2012-06-23

Rob Macleod2012-06-23Hi,
I have been into this problem for quite a while.
As any researcher, I am usually presenting my results in two formats:
1. academic papers, for which I use Latex
2. presentations, for which I use powerpoint.
In both formats, I have figures which I would like to generate at high quality.
The problem is that I need different software to generate these figures for Latex/powerpoint, and I often find myself repeating on the same drawing steps in different softwares.
Let me try to add more details to my question.
For academic papers I use IPE which saves the figures in pdf in a vector format. When including these files in latex, the output is neat and clean. You can zoom into the figure as much as you want and all lines/text are sharp and clear. Drawing in IPE, however, is a bit difficult and does not have all the drawing functions that I would like to have (e.g. alignments, many kinds of arrows, shapes and so on).
For slides I use powerpoint since it is what-you-see-is-what-you-get. It's much easier, at least for me, than creating a presentation in latex-beamer. The time it takes to customize the slides (background, lines, shapes etc.) and to add animations is incomparable with what it can take with beamer. so, no chance I'm leaving powerpoint in the near future.
A while ago, I used the basic equation editor to input formulas. However, the symbols were quite different from the latex appearance. At some point, I found out that there are many programs to input latex code into powerpoint. In particular, IguannaTex (freeware!) does an excellent job. It is an Add-Ins to powerpoint, which let you write the latex code as usual. Then, it complies the code, generates .png file and adds it to the current slide. You can also modify the code later on and the program updates the .png and the slide. so far so good.
However, I am wondering whether there is a better option than doubling the work -- drawing in IPE for papers and redrawing in powerpoint for slides.
LatexOne solution I had in mind is to draw only in powerpoint. Then, use the 'Save as pdf' option (exists in office 2007, they call it 'publish') to generate the figure for the papers. The problem is that powerpoint decreases the .png resolution right after it is placed in the slide. (this has nothing to do with IguannaTex). Moreover, once you publish to .pdf (or even saving into .jpg) powerpoint further reduces the resolution. The final figures become unclear, and I lose all the sharp and neat look of latex. This is quite annoying since IguannaTex produces high-quality .png files. so why should I lose resolution just because going through the powerpoint engine ?
I found a number of websites explaining how to increase powerpoint export resolution (thru some registry value), but this is insufficient. The final figures are still not at the quality I would like to have.

Latex Plugin For Powerpoint Slides


So my question is a call for help to find a method to input .png (or .pdf) files to powerpoint (IguannaTex currently creates .png from the .dvi of Latex. It is not a big problem to generate the .pdf from the latex code) so that after publishing the slide to .pdf format the quality remains high.
I attach an example:

Latex Plugin For Powerpoint Presentation

1. Latex_Eq.tex - the source file that IguannaTex uses.
2. Latex_Eq.png - the image that IguannaTex generates. (there is also Latex_Eq.pdf which is the .pdf that Latex can create from #1),
3. Slide.pptx - how it looks in powerpoint after you 'drag-n-drop' the .png file into an empty slide. the quality look fine for now, although you can already notice some resolution problems, which do not exist in the .png file. (try to drag-n-drop the .pdf on the slide. it even gets worse).
4. Output.pdf - after using the publish option. Zoom in again to check the resolution.
So you start with .tex file and end up with lousy .pdf output...
I would appreciate any ideas of how to overcome this problem.
Thank you,
-moshiko.