Using Mathematica to build presentations and documents
I use Mma mainly to solve relatively small problems.
I want to start using it also to prepare my presentations and documents, but I am having troubles to learn how to do it from the embedded help, and I guess some good resources may be available elsewhere.
Do you know any useful pointers (books, papers, videos ...)?
Do you have a "bag of tricks" to post here?
Edit
This question received two answers so far (@mzabsky's and Mr.Wizard's) and although both are useful, perhaps my concerns are much more basic. So I am posting an example of the kind of things I am unable to do (or understand how to discern how others did them).
I took the following example from The Mathematica Journal (the notebook at the left on the following image - click on the image to see full size):
So, some issues, just to get the idea of my troubles:
1) I copied the text to my .nb on the right, formatted it with the same style (text), but the appearance is different, so I guess the style definition is different. How can I copy the style definitions from one .nb to the other?
2) The table below the text block doesn't have an attached style. How was it formatted? Where is the background color defined?
I would like pointers to read (or videos to look, or whatever) about these issues. I don't want you to write down here a book on Mathematica formatting!
Summary of the links posted in answers
- A Mathgroup thread (John Browne) and here (David Park and Selwyn Hollis)
- Advice from Bob Ueland
- The Writing Assistant Palette
- David Park's notes
- Simon's documents
- Tips for Mathematica SlideShow presenters
- Notebook formatting
- Presentations with Mathematica
- Videos
- Tips for Mathematica Slide Show Presenters
- How to - Automatic Slide Show
- Create a Lecture Notebook
Answer
I use Mathematica to take lecture notes in real time without any major issues (while the proud TeX guys struggle hard to keep up :) ). I have also used it for most math-related homework/assignments I wrote during past two and half years on university.
Before you start, you may want to look at some of these video tutorials.
Also, a few recommendations from me:
- Keyboard shortcuts are the key to type fast. Ctrl+9 for inline math cell, Ctrl+6 for superscript, etc.
- Learn symbol identifiers for the "esc - symbol - esc" notation. "sum" for Sum, "es" for empty set...you can find list of these in the Mathematica documentation. I have encountered only very few symbols I wanted to type that don't have the esc notation name (for example, leftwards double arrow or double right tee).
- Type all math-related stuff into inline math cells. The math cell will do some of the math related formatting for you - put spaces where they belong, render all variables and symbols in italics, etc.
- Use the preformatted templates found in "New"->"Styled Notebook".
- Do not use ENTER for breaklines, individual paragraph should go into separate text cells (Ctrl+Shift+D) so Mathematica can break the content into individual pages/slides correctly.
- In-built Mathematica PDF export sucks big-time; I use CutePDF printer for this.
Also, save often and back up often (Dropbox/Syncplicity are the ideal solution), one misplaced keyboard shortcut can turn hundred hours of work worth document into a goulash (trust me, been there) :)
Example of lecture notes I took in real-time during lecture (it is in Czech, but that doesn't matter much).