Re: Software for poster presentations
Hi,
On Sun, May 18, 2008 at 11:13:03PM +0100, Stuart Prescott wrote:
>
> Hi All,
>
> As a brief respite from packaging discussions, here's a user question:
>
> What software would you use or recommend for preparing a poster for
> presentation at a conference? [0]
>
> A few things come to mind straight off -- perhaps existing users can make
> comments on these things:
>
> * openoffice impress or draw: I guess these would be the same as doing a
> poster in powerpoint, with the same limitations. Does it work OK?
>
> * inkscape: can it handle flowing and editing text nicely? I've only ever used
> it for drawing. I see it's debtagged as "works-with-format::tex" which I find
> intriguing but don't know what that means in practice. I know it has
> bugs/limitations in being able to compress jpeg images which could result in
> an obscenely large PDF export when it comes to producing the final product.
>
> * scribus: I've never used it but by its description it sounds like a good
> tool for the job; I've heard it's a bit quirky but that it's a good program
> for this sort of thing.
Over the last years I have tried to use all of the above to prepare
posters. I have to say that inkscape is by far the best.
It is true that it is quite bad with text editing, but usually you do
not want much text on a poster and inkscape indirectly helps with it ;)
However, for the last poster I needed syntax highlighted code (which
would be a PITA to do with inkscape), but since 0.46 you can import PDF
files. So I used the PDF of some latex-beamer slides and imported the
Latex-rendered code (which obviously also works for plain text).
Moreover, working with SVG as the base format it is quite easy to put
the poster in version control and work together with several people.
Additonally inkscape can import almost all reasonable formats, so you
are free to use dia or xfig for plot. However, since I do most data
analysis in Python I can really recommend matplotlib for plot which is
able to export directly to SVG.
HTH,
Michael
--
GPG key: 1024D/3144BE0F Michael Hanke
http://apsy.gse.uni-magdeburg.de/hanke
ICQ: 48230050
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