Presentations with org-mode and beamer.

Combining org-mode and the Latex beamer package allows us to write high quality presentations using the power of both emacs org-mode and beamer.

Here’s my customizations:

Getting started

In beamer terminology, a ‘frame’ is defined as a slide. Each frame in org-beamer-mode can be specified using a heading (starting with * or ** depending on the indentation level that you have set).

Beamer blocks

Adding code to slides

It is important to set a frame to fragile when you add code (or anything verbatim) to your slides. It can be done using the BEAMER_OPT property. For example:

:PROPERTIES:
:BEAMER_OPT: fragile
:END:

Splitting into two columns

Use beamer blocks using the C-c C-b commands for generating beamer blocks via org. For the simplest use case where a beamer block is a column, a heading needs to specified as a B_block and a BMCOL. Beamer will then take the heading of each column as the heading of the block. A minimal example would look like so:

** Heading left                                             :BMCOL:B_block:
    :PROPERTIES:
    :BEAMER_col: 0.5
    :BEAMER_env: block
    :END:

    some text.
    
** Heading right                                              :BMCOL:B_block:
    :PROPERTIES:
    :BEAMER_col: 0.5
    :BEAMER_env: block
    :END:

    some other text.

org-beamer will simply keep adding columns until the BEAMER_col property is present. The value supplied to that property is the percentage width that the column occupies.

Useful links

• Org Beamer reference card: https://github.com/fniessen/refcard-org-beamer
• Org dependencies: https://orgmode.org/worg/org-dependencies.html