Getting powerdot to work

Powerdot is a presentation package for LaTeX, much like beamer.

I recently got it up and running on my system and I thought I'll setup a quick guide for it:

1. Getting Powerdot: The best place to get it from is the CTAN mirror itself from here. Extract it at a place which will be referred to we $POWERDOT
2. Installing it: These steps pertain to a Linux system. I believe that the system for Windows MikTeX is simpler, involving pointing and clicking. However, for Linux, the process is somewhat more complicated.
• Figure out the tex working folder: 
  

  kpsewhich -var-value TEXMFLOCAL 
  

  Call this folder $TEXMF
  (http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=what-TDS)
• Create the right directory structure, copy the respective files there and finally update texhash:
  

  sudo mkdir -p $TEXMF/tex/sty/powerdot
  sudo cp $POWERDOT/*.sty $TEXMF/tex/sty/powerdot
  
  sudo mkdir -p $TEXMF/tex/cls/powerdot
  sudo cp $POWERDOT/*.sty $TEXMF/tex/cls/powerdot
  
  sudo texhash

  (http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=install-where)

Finally, write a simple powerdot_test.tex file:

\documentclass{powerdot}

\begin{document}

\begin{slide}{Slide 1}
  Contents.
\end{slide}

\section{Introduction}

\begin{slide}{Slide 2}
  More content.
\end{slide}

\end{document}

Now apparently pdflatex has a few issues with compiling powerdot presentations. Hence, use latex to create the dvi file and then convert it to pdf:

latex powerdot_test.tex
dvipdf powerdot_test.dvi
evince powerdot_test.pdf

That should be it!


vim-latexsuit users

If you use vim-latex like me, then there here are a few tips.

I have set my vim-latexsuit setup such that is produces pdf files by default. You can check your default format by:

:echo g:Tex_DefaultTargetFormat 

and if it is not dvi, set it to dvi by:

:let g:Tex_DefaultTargetFormat=dvi

vim-latex will figure out how to compile the file the right way. However, the default viewer for the dvi files is ghostscipt viewer, which is extremely ill-suited for presentations Also, evince opens the dvi files with scaling all wrong. Hence, I do this:

:let g:Tex_ViewRuleComplete_dvi='dvipdf $*.dvi; evince $*.pdf &'

which converts the dvi file to pdf before passing it to evince.