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Software for poster presentations



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.

* LyX: is it even possible without fighting it every step of the way?

* latex (directly): as for lyx, it would of course be possible, but is it 
sensible to do so? [1]

thoughts? comments? suggestions?

thanks, in advance

Stuart


[0] For those who don't know what I mean, it is common at scientific 
conferences for a large number of attendees to "present" a poster on their 
work rather than speaking about it in a seminar. The A0-sized posters are put 
up around a room, people wander about reading bits of them and the presenters 
stand near their poster to field questions. Beer and wine frequently flow. 
Posters tend to be quite visual with diagrams, schematics, photos, reaction 
mechanisms etc and some text to explain what's going on.

[1] I frequently ask the same question when making presentations in latex with 
latex-beamer... if my presentations were all text, beamer would be fantastic 
for it, but since they tend to be all graphics, I find myself spending hours 
fiddling with diagrams in tikz and wonder if this really is the right tool 
for the job.



-- 
Stuart Prescott                 www.nanoNANOnano.net


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