beam

====

A LaTeX slide generator you can write in faster than beamer.



Inspired by sent, but with support for equations and LaTeX



	https://tools.suckless.org/sent/



Dependencies

------------

Build



Runtime

- LaTeX and the "beamer" document class



Installation

------------

Running



	make && sudo make install



will compile the binary and install it into your system respectively.



Specs

-----

Here is an informal specification for the beam file format.



Slides

- Slides are separated by an empty newline.

- In LaTeX a single newline is equivalent to a space. beam will convert single

	newlines into double newlines within a slide, to allow for maximal

	expressiveness with minimal fuss. This means you should not be hard-wrapping

	lines.

- Leading and trailing whitespace in a line is ignored.



Special characters

- `#` will start a new section with the text that follows it on the same line.

- `~` will set the title of the slide it is in. The `~` character always starts

  a new slide.

- `-` can be used to make a list of bullet points. Under the hood, it calls the

	"itemize" environment in LaTeX.

- `>` starts a block. The first line is used as the title (leave it blank for no title).

- `<` starts an exampleblock. Again, the first line is used as the title.

- `!` starts an alertblock. Again, the first line is used as the title.

- `@` can be used to create a slide with a certain image. It is possible, but

	discouraged, to add text to such a slide. Under the hood, it uses

		\setbeamertemplate{background}{

			\includegraphics[width=\paperwidth,height=\paperheight]{IMAGEPATH}

		}

- `^` will directly input text verbatim into the preamble. This lets you set

	the theme, title, and author of a presentation. If a line starts with `^`, it

	will end the current slide, without exception.



- Character escaping is handled by LaTeX, not beam. That means it's impossible

	to display a line that starts with a raw `-`, `!`, or `>` character. This is

	regarded as a design flaw, but a very minor one.



You can also use % to act as a comment, since it's also a comment in LaTeX. Be

careful not to start a new slide by accident though.



Example

-------

An example is contained in "example.beam". Run



	make && ./beam example.beam



beam will generate an intermediate tex file and then compile it through

latexmk. The example is reproduced below.



	^ \documentclass{beamer}[12pt]{beamer}

	^ \title{beam}

	^ \author{Dennis Chen}



	\titlepage



	# Introduction



	~ What is beam?

	- beam is a file format to write presentations with

	- beam is a program that converts beam files into beamer



	~ Why?

	beam does for beamer what Markdown does for HTML

	- beamer takes far too long to write.

	- We only need a subset of beamer's features



	# Features

	

	~ Frametitles

	Use the ``~'' character to set the frametitle.



	~ Bullet points

	- You've already seen it in this presentation.

	- Bullet points invoke the ``itemize'' environment.



	~ Block

	> How to make a block

	> This symbol makes a block.



	~ Exampleblock

	< How to make an exampleblock

	< This symbol makes an exampleblock.



	~ Alertblock

	! How to make an alertblock

	! This symbol makes an alertblock.



	~ Images

	Use the ``\@'' character to set a background image.

	

	@beach.jpg



	# Miscellaneous



	~ Stylization

	beam should be written in all lowercase, even at the start of a sentence. 



For some edge cases, see "edgecases.beam".