Check http://code.google.com/p/powerpointtools for up-to-date information.
I have written two PowerPoint Tools for PowerPoint 2007, which are hosted at http://code.google.com/p/powerpointtools.
PowerPoint LanguagePainter
The LanguagePainter allows you to write slides in a language different from your current keyboard layout without PowerPoint messing the language settings up all the time.
PowerPoint LaTeX
This addin provides better support for formulas in PowerPoint. It supports both inline formulas and equations:
Updated Ribbon (above) and Formula Editor Dialog (below)
It supports rendering using LaTeX through webservices (currently it only supports the one from http://www.codecogs.com) and MiKTeX. The latter has some neat features like resolution adaptation and baseline alignment which the webservice lacks.
There are still some code clean-ups, small bugfixes etc that I should work on, but I don't plan on selling this addin, so I don't really care if it's still somewhat work in progress. I'm going to continue working on it when I have to use PowerPoint again.
You can download the tools out at http://code.google.com/p/powerpointtools/.
"Inter-Mortem"
I'm not really done with the project but I think it's time nonetheless to talk about the project itself. Initially I looked into using TexPoint for a presentation I had to prepare, but it wasn't very user-friendly in my opinion and I also didn't really want to install MiKTeX again, so the idea was born to use a web service (from codecogs.com or wordpress.com) to render the equations and embed the formulas as pictures. A few tests later I knew that it was feasible, so I started to work on the project.
The bulk of the code was written in 4 days during my winter vacation in 2008/2009 and again in spring (May) 2010.
This warrants the question what took me so long to upload it and/or write about it. The main reason why it was delayed by such a long time is that I wanted to polish it some more and make sure it really has a well-rounded feature set. In retrospect I shouldn't have added support for non-inline equations because people will hardly use them and the way you edit them is kind of crazy (I create a text shape in the current slide to let the user change the equation) and I reverted lots of the later changes because I wasn't sure which direction to take UI-wise.
The user interface is mostly okay in my opinion but the ribbon might need a redesign to streamline it some more and also maybe come up with new things users would want to do. For that I'll probably wait until I have to use it again (probably in a few weeks' time) and then take notes about what to improve.
The design of the code is somewhat messy when you look at it, but that's because it grew out of a experimental project to see if it was possible to embed LaTeX code the way I wanted, and most of the functionality ended up in one big file/class (LaTeXTool.cs) because everything is centered around inline formulas.
First, AWESOME JOB! I've been fighting with beamer and texpoint for years hoping that someone would write something like this plugin. Best feature, I LOVE the baseline correction.
Now, my question, is there an easy way to change Settings.MikTexTemplate without editing the installation file? I think the correct way of handling this is to modify how you specify the preamble... I'm happy to contribute a patch if you'd be interested.
Hello David,
thanks for your positive comment. It's good to hear
To your question: Right now there is no way to edit MikTexTemplate. I guess I could replace the current preamble with it and give you full control over it (and/or I could add an "Advanced Preamble" checkbox and a "Restore Default" button). I'll think about it and see if I can implement it soon.
Of course, I always welcome patches, too, but I'm not sure how clean the code is
The baseline correction feature is something I've specifically added MiKTeX support for, because the visual difference is very pleasing, but the algorithm is held together by duct tape and prayers. There are always some cases when text reflowing goes wrong, because PowerPoint has a terrible API..:
If you change the baseline of a text selection, PowerPoint adjusts the font size by itself, and I think I haven't figured out, how it calculates the new font size (the only thing I remember for sure is the frustration from "fixing" the same bits over and over again.. because PowerPoint has never quite behaved the way I expected it to..).
If you ever get to the point, that somehow baseline correction totally fails and you need to get it done, just use "formulas" and manually reflow the text. It's not as nice, but I doubt that I've hit all the border cases (especially huge inline matrices can be problematic).
Cheers,
Andreas
Andreas,
There IS a way to edit the template without hacking the installer! You just have to find out where power point installs the "PowerPointLatex.dll.config" file. It's hidden away in the bowels of the user directory...
On my windows 7 machine, it's
C:\Users\\AppData\Local\Apps\2.0\R4O6YY19.AKD\6BRQN5GX.T9Q\powe..vsto_a2503a34fefd7de1_0000.0007_9de5b578c6d9fdc5
I suspect that some of those strings are random, so you'll probably need to look around in the Local\Apps\2.0\ directory until you find a PowerPointLatex.dll.config file -- that's the right one.
Editing this file let me select the arev font on windows 7 in powerpoint 2007 (really just inserting \usepackage{arev}. The nice thing about arev is that you can get a matching true-type font (Bitstream Vera Sans) in powerpoint, so that the math "matches" the text!
Also, I just installed powerpoint 2010 on another computer. Unfortunately, the miktex service doesn't seem to work there. (The webservice does work.) I just get a formula error. Once I get my version of Visual Studio installed, I'll probably start hacking around more.
David
Okay, I fixed the problem with Miktex. For some reason, it wasn't auto-installing the "preview" package. I guess I should put a note about that on the wiki.
Hello David,
first sorry for the late reply. I need to reorganize the way I'm notified about comments, because I don't write posts frequently and the notification emails fell off my radar last weekend
I've looked into the changes required to change the MiKTeX preamble. However, I've been put off by it, because I first need to (or should) change the way the addon loads its data from the presentations, since it doesn't currently do version checks or other compatiblity checks, and this could lead to problems when people "upgrade" to newer versions.
I'll try to look at it this afternoon and see if something can be done about it.
If you want, I could add you to the project on code.google.com as committer, so you can change the wiki or commit bugfixes.
I don't have PowerPoint 2010 and I have never tested the addon with it, so it's awesome news that it runs
Actually I'm calling LaTeX/MiKTeX with a command-line option to automatically download and install needed packages, so this is truly weird.
Cheers,
Andreas
PS: I've added a small note to the PowerPointLaTeX wiki about the preview package issue.
Andreas,
Why don't you send me an email (I think you should get my address via the forum) and we can figure out some way to proceed regarding code? I managed to modify the code a bit to be more flexible with the preamble. Though I'd be curious to hear your concerns about the way the addon loads info from the presentation.
Also, I'd love to pick your brain about text alignment issues. I'm trying to figure out how PP2010 aligns its own internal equations. (Or even how I could manipulate them, if that's even possible.)