I've read that LaTeX can be used also for presentations, using specific packages to make slides in PDF.

But I'm wondering: since LaTeX is a typographic language made to separate content from style, and being PDF a format designed for printing; what are this presentation tools meant for? Maybe I'm thinking about the wrong type of presentation?

What's the reason for using LaTeX for this task?

UPDATE: I'm asking this because I'm about to start making a presentation, and yes, I'd prefer avoid using PowerPoint; I like vector graphics and I was wondering if it's possible to create a sort of vectorial GIF (just to give the idea), or anyway something of platform-independent. But I find PDF too static for this purpose (maybe it's just a personal feeling).

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    The main reason why LaTeX was designed for printing is probably because, at the time, there was no computer presentation (beamer) hardware. The first comparable packages for presentations were based on overhead foils (print em; use em). – user10274 Jan 15 '12 at 9:31
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This is simply a longish comment...




2) and being PDF a format designed for printing.










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    I read this as: "If you've got content, say it with LaTeX. If you haven't any content, why are you there? (And if you have to be there, but have nothing to say, use Powerpoint in the hope that no-one notices)." If my reading is right, I completely agree! – Andrew Stacey Jan 25 '12 at 11:57
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    @AndrewStacey Indeed :) See the celtschk's comment to Stefan's answer. I think both of you summarize the point quite cleverly. – percusse Jan 25 '12 at 16:00

There are plenty of good reasons to use LaTeX for presentations.







Some additional benefits:

  • Consistent screen and print versions. With little effort you can use the same source to produce both screen versions (with overlays) and print/handout versions (no/reduced overlays). The print quality will be up to your usual standards.
  • BibTeX for easy citations in presentations. Even with a link to the publication.
  • Includes. You can easily build multiple versions with overlap, if you structure your input data appropriately. For example, you can have multiple chapters, and build either a single big presentation (for reference), or per-lecture excerpts easily. This can be useful on many levels, e.g. including "about us" slides easily, sharing chapters or topics across presentations etc. All without copy&paste - fix an error in one place, have it fixed in the other place, too. Include some additional material as backup slides for your presentation version etc.
  • Programmable. You can even write programs to generate your slides. Or plots (this is where I mostly use it).
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  • I use it predominantly for my lectures. Using pgfplots/TikZ/Beamer for uncovering plots, explaining graphs it is so much easier – Leeser Oct 21 '16 at 17:47




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  • But doesn't PowerPoint allow you to export a .pptx file to a PDF? – Mew Jul 6 at 13:29
  • @Mew: Note the year that answer was written in. – celtschk Jul 10 at 7:00
  • @celtschk Sure, but a quick Google search shows that PowerPoint 2010 already had support for PDF/XPS publishing. Hence, by 2012, "having PDF output" and "PowerPoint presentations" were not mutually exclusive. – Mew Jul 10 at 10:04

I will add a different answer from the vast majority here. I am an (very) old time TeX user. Albeit Beamer and Tikz are great achievements, I would like to warn especially new users. The web is full of articles about beamer, saying basically "look how simple it is to write your slides". So I will insist on the flip side of the coin.

My point is: they should say rather "how fun it is" because it may definitely not be simple nor fast (however it can be fun!).

First, no, it is not that easy. Whenever you have something non trivial to write down, you need to resort to the complex TeX language (unless someone knowledgeable has already solved your problem). In the end you use more brain power to typeset your slides than to think about what to put in them. Because the TeX world is a complex world, with lots of intricacies.

All the beamer presentations look the same (and actually, not many themes are acceptable to me). You may wonder why ? Try to design your own theme. Not impossible, but not for the newcomer either. It takes a lot of time. Even when you know TeX. Only academics can hope to defray the learning costs over a very long period of time (IMHO).

Secondly, I have beamer slide decks that take several minutes to recompile with LuaLaTeX. And whenever I do it, I have to check I have not introduced some glitch somewhere, in which case I need to recompile.

It is slow and it requires a lot of attention that would better be used somewhere else.

My answer today is not PowerPoint (or Impress), albeit it is definitely easier than the beamer route. I'm using reveal.js to typeset HTML slides. Not perfect, but a lot easier than beamer and MathJax can render the maths. Javascript is also easier to play with than the TeX language. And the source text for the slide is markdown : it is not cluttered with TeX macros everywhere (I have slides with much more TeX/beamer/Tikz code than with actual text!)

Finally, I don't understand the PDF argument: my PowerPoint is perfectly able to save a slideshow as PDF.

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    Welcome, you aren't forced to use beamer to do the slides. beamer adds stuff like overlays, and other fancy things. If you don't need that, you can modify a simple article document. An asnwer of mine has a link to an article about that topic: \pause in KOMA-script scrartcl – Johannes_B Oct 13 '15 at 17:13






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  • +1 for the mention about Lilypond and MusicTeX, I've always wondered about them. – imnothere Jan 15 '12 at 6:52

At the risk of getting downvoted ...

Why should I use LaTeX for presentations?

Most likely you should not. Beamer encourages bad presentation practices.

This is not just about Beamer vs PowerPoint. It is about writing markup vs designing graphically.

Let me quote from one answer here:


But presenting well is precisely about ... good presentation. You already have the content. Now the question is: how do you present it effectively? Arguably, a good presentation should be designed, not written, so a drawing program is precisely what you need for it.

It is certainly possible to make good slides with Beamer, but if you give someone both a markup based and a graphical designer based system, and ask them to make slides, guess which one will end up with:

  • Just text and text and text, typically bullets in a single column.
  • Figures always arranged in a boring grid without any flow that shows relationships.
  • Irrelevant or distracting information that shouldn't be there, but the person had the urge to fill the template.
  • Things that should be said will be written instead.

One argument for Beamer is the ease of writing equations. This question was originally asked in 2012. Since then, both PowerPoint and Keynote have come a long way. They both have good equation editors which can be used (I'd say are best used) with LaTeX syntax. You will still feel at home.

Of course, Beamer does have its place. It can be great for teaching math, if you already decided that you do not want to use a blackboard. I can also see how it makes it easy to generate information-dense handouts—but then you might ask yourself if you are really creating a presentation or lecture notes? However, in practice, there often isn't time to create both.

However, for a presentation where you need to get the message through effectively in a limited amount of time, where the audience is actually listening to you instead of just reading slides, do consider using a "drawing program" like PowerPoint. There are good open source ones too. You would end up using a drawing program to make the figures for a good Beamer presentation anyway.

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    You might be right here and some points are very valid, but in my experience using PP to create text-heavy slides is also common practice. Personally, I would say that if you know how to make good presentations the tool plays a subordinate role. And for me, being used to TikZ the benefit from creating consistent slides with visually designed content is neither much worse nor much better than using PP (except for being able to reuse graphics in lecture notes later on). – TeXnician Oct 31 '18 at 11:48
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    @TeXnician If you know how to make good presentations the tool plays a subordinate role. Grave in stone. – yo' Oct 31 '18 at 11:49
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    Though I agree with your main points (the presentation must be designed visually, and Beamer makes it too easy to do the wrong thing — but even Powerpoint does this to some extent), I have tried Beamer, Powerpoint, Google Slides etc., and I find that the best tool for designing a presentation is actually none of these but the ultimate drawing program: paper and pen. After having planned the presentation completely (e.g. draw roughly what each slide will look like, move the pieces of paper around etc.), then one can start to use technology to achieve the desired visual outcome. – ShreevatsaR Nov 1 '18 at 7:32

For me it is one huge advantage and one disadvantage.






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    (There are much easier ways to get code into LaTeX documents, including presentations - which partially proves your point: when you know how to do it, it's quick. When you don't know, it's slow.) – Andrew Stacey Jan 18 '12 at 11:30
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  • @recluze, try out Python's ipython notebooks. I've recently seen awesome presentations, including code to be run (and modified!) on the fly. On my ToLearn list now... – vonbrand Oct 14 '15 at 14:51

I'm using beamer because of its comprehensive and partly unique features:

  1. Math: With LaTeX the best mathematical layout is available
  2. Sketches: With the tikz package any technical sketch or diagram is possible
  3. Graphs: With the pgfplots package you font consistent, complex graphs with overlay effects are possible
  4. Videos, Animations and 3D objects: With the media15 package animations and youtube videos, even embedding of 3D objects into PDFs is possible with pdflatex
  5. Overlay effects: With beamer you can overlay even between formulas and tables
  6. Hyper linking: With beamer you can link and connect anything, formulas, table of contents and beamer-buttons
  7. Layout: Total control of any layout aspect (through (La)TeX, at least theoretically)
  8. Self-contained: All information, all layout controls in one single text file and all media content embedded in one single output file
  9. Standardised: With the PDF output format you are independent of proprietary viewer formats and software versions! (I started with beamer after I was forced to present my PowerPoint presentation with a different PowerPoint version: Some formatting changed and my animations didn't run!)
  10. Typography: The default beamer layouts and font selections guide you in good presentation techniques (not too cramped, etc.)
  11. Availability: The tools are standardised, cost-free and easily available on many OS, LaTeX is the standard in scientific publishing and there are no licensing or patent issues nor software lock-in.

But I'd also like to mention possible disadvantages of beamer, compared to WYSIWYG solutions, for example, Libre Office's Impress or PowerPoint ;-)

  1. The learning curve is steeper, but excellent tutorials and user communities (TeXamples e.g.) are available
  2. Command syntax is harder to memorise and type, but the LaTeX and beamer manuals and references are excellent and widely available.
  3. Image positioning remains somewhat cumbersome :-/
  4. When mitigating point 3. and placing images automatically, a sterile and a bit too perfect overall impression might ensue (at least for my taste)
  5. Often corporate presentation templates are not available for LaTeX (but it's worth to redo them in beamer ;-) )
  6. Sharing with WYSIWYG content is only partly possible, the majority in business environment is using PowerPoint :-(
  7. Expressing oneself in a mark-up language like LaTeX compared to WYSIWYG is brain dependent and might be more difficult for some humans. If you enjoy programming anyway, go for beamer!
  8. Often the process of editing, compiling and evaluating the change in your document takes longer. But this improved much with auto-reverting viewers and faster CPUs, besides there are now WYSIWYG environments for LaTeX available TeX SE question.

By the way, I'm using now org-mode to write my beamer presentations (and anything else textual) to save myself some of the cumbersome aspects of the LaTeX language among other advantages.

By, by the way, lately I discovered Reveal, the html presentation framework. Which is looking interesting when considering to publish the presentation on the web.

  • @Joseph Wright: thanks for the formatting hints – Dieter.Wilhelm Oct 21 '16 at 10:45
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    IMHO point 4 of your list of disadvantages is invalid: the same can happen with other software, too. :) Point 7 of the first list says it all: the author is in charge of the appearance and not the software. :) – cgnieder Oct 21 '16 at 14:55
  • @clemens: You're right with the 4th disadvantage, I edited it to make my point clearer. Thanks – Dieter.Wilhelm Oct 21 '16 at 20:18

It occurred to me that there could be another reason to use TeX for presentations, which is of course applicable to all TeX documents: the convenience of using source control and diff tools to track changes to the document.

That is likely possible with most of the other formats, but it usually works best with plain text of course.

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