A few years ago, I came across impressive, which is a python script that adds extra oomph to presentations. It uses openGL for effects like highlight boxes, spotlight effect, and overview pages. If you haven’t used it, I’d definitely recommend to give it a try. I don’t use it personally as I find it to be a bit slow and unreliable, but I like the options that the script provides. So, I thought that it would be useful to implement these effects in TeX.

Since I first came across this script, I thought that it will be useful to add some of these presentation features to my workflow. It has taken a while to get around to actually do that.

The feature that I liked the most is the overview page: at the end of the presentation, show the thumbnails of the slides, and if someone has any question, you can click on the thumbnail and go to any slide in the presentation. In fact, I’d prefer not to show all the slides, but only the important ones (like the start of a new section).

Thanks to Wolfgang Schuster and Hans Hagen, I am happy to announce the overview module that provides this feature. I have yet to write the complete documentation, but since it is the new year, I thought that I’d at least annouce the module. The basic usage is as follows:

\usemodule[overviewpage][level=section] \setupinteraction[state=start] \setuppapersize[S4] \setuphead[section][page=yes] \starttext \startsection[title={....}] ... \stopsection \startsection[title={....}] ... \stopsection \startsection[title={....}] ... \stopsection \placeoverviewpage

The \placeoverviewpage macro creates the overview slide. The easiest way to explain the output is through an example.

The final page of this file is:

Clicking on one of the rectangles takes you to the corresponding page. Check out the complete PDF file.

The only caveat in using the module is that you can only create a thumbnail of a numbered head. Thus, unnumbered heads like subject, subsubject, etc. do not work. If you want to create a thumbnail of a unnumbered head, the best way is to declare it as a numbered head but do not display the number. For example:

\setuphead[section][numbercommand=\gobbleoneargument]

Please go and give the module a spin and let me know what you think.