beamer usability

[Scott Kostyshak]

On Fri, Aug 18, 2023 at 07:49:45AM -0400, Neal Becker wrote:
> I've been using LyX for quite a while and beamer for even quite a while
> longer, but my knowledge of LyX is fairly superficial.
> 
> I frequently produce slides which incorporate a graph on the left with
> bulleted text on the right.  An example LaTeX code is below.  I do need to
> use ERT for the minipage.  The reason for the minipage is to shrink the
> text on the left.  I cut/paste LaTeX here because pasting LyX doesn't seem
> to include the ERT.
> 
> Since this structure is a bit tedious to enter I usually prefer to
> copy/paste the frame, changing the text and the figure but keeping the
> structure.
> 
> This copy/pasting is a bit more difficult than I would hope.  Firstly, to
> successfully copy/paste a beamer frame it is best to make sure there is a
> frame separator.  Position the cursor just at the end of this frame
> separator before the frame you wish to copy, then select down to the end of
> the frame.
> 
> When pasting, it seems best to position cursor just after a frame
> separator.  If this is not done (frame separators not used) I frequently
> wind up with a frame title outside of a frame, a situation that seems
> difficult to recover from (although at least 1 time I did fix it by
> positioning the cursor near the start of the frame title and selecting
> "frame").
> 
> Assuming I've placed the cursor at the end of the graphic of the frame I'd
> like to copy, the procedure to get frame separator inserted seems tedious.
> 1.  Hit enter.  Now I'm in "columns"
> 2. Hit dedent.  Now I'm still in "columns" but outside the frame
> 3. Change to "standard" . For some reason, this moves cursor back inside
> frame
> 4. Hit dedent again.  Now finally I can hit enter to produce the frame
> separator.
> 
> Is there an easier way?
> 
> Thanks,
> Neal

For your specific question, does this thread help you out?

  https://www.mail-archive.com/lyx-users@lists.lyx.org/msg104013.html

Basically, if you figure out a command sequence that does what you want then you can bind it to a shortcut. I know this isn't out-of-the-box user-friendly, but perhaps it helps your use case.

More generally, I've also found similar workflows to be unexpectedly complicated. I think that LyX's beamer workflow needs some improvements. Thankfully, LyX's beamer support was hugely improved several years ago. Before then, from what I understand it was a bunch of Beamer-specific hacks cobbled together; now it is just a well-defined special case of a document class. So I think the hard work is done, and all the required functionality is there, we just need to improve the interface/workflow.

I have some ideas, based on sporadic discussions on the list. But I have no time to work on the code, and I do not want to start long conversations unless there is a volunteer willing to work on the code. Anyone who would be interested in working on the code, let me know and I will put the time into organizing my thoughts.

In the meantime, I think it would be helpful to collect several use cases that are unexpected complicated, like the one that you bring up.

Scott
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