A long time ago, Optics and Photonics News had
an article on how to produce slides which no matter
how they were inserted in the projector were always
wrong, a humorous article of course.

"Brian"  wrote in

"Charles Manoras" wrote:
You know optics and obscurity often go together... :-)

Which is why I always sit in the front row of optics meetings, as some
speakers' slides cannot be seen from the back.

Brian

Ancient and Modern Optics.
================================================
Slides? Slides?

When was the last time you attended a meeting?

It's all computer projection nowadays!   :-)

But I wish at times we still had slides

Not long ago I was at a presentation where the guy
delivering the lecture had prepared everything with
a Mac and the computer that was used to interface
with the projector was Windows based.

The result was a disaster.

Of course slides have their problems too.

A long time ago, Optics and Photonics News had
an article on how to produce slides which no matter
how they were inserted in the projector were always
wrong, a humorous article of course.

But computer projection or slides the efforts on the
part of some presenters to produce pictures which
are undecipherable / illegible at any distance still go
on.

I regrettatbly don't own a mac because most CAD or optics programs
are Windows based, most if not all AFAIK (what about Klein's program?).

In article <1pOdnVaEUNgRMp7VnZ2dnUVZ_hOdnZ2d@comcast.com>,
"Charles Manoras" <inconnu@cette.adresse> wrote:

I regrettatbly don't own a mac because most CAD or optics programs
are Windows based, most if not all AFAIK (what about Klein's program?).


You do know about the Boot Camp/Parallels capabilities for running
Windows apps on all the current (Intel-based) Macs? Haven't used them
myself, but all the feedback I've seen has been totally favorable.

"ImageAnalyst" <imageanalyst@mailinator.com> wrote


snipitty


Charles:
I'm not sure what computer program you use to make your
presentations. I use Powerpoint, and each screen shot (not sure what
it's called in your program) is called a slide. The "slide"
terminology is still very, very widely used. Brian's terminology is
still current. If not "slide", then what alternate term do you use
for one screen full of information that is being projected by a
computer projector?
Regards,
ImageAnalyst

=============================================

OK, I was referring to an otherwise fascinating presentation not
on optics but on epigenetics (see google) which was to a large
extent ruined by the lecturer not being able to show us about 50%
at best of his graphics because of the alleged incompatibility between
the Mac used for making the presentation and the projector that was
used during the lecture.

At least that was the lecturer's excuse.

To tell you the truth I was not entirely convinced as well as many
people in the audience, but what do I know...

I regrettatbly don't own a mac because most CAD or optics programs
are Windows based, most if not all AFAIK (what about Klein's program?).

In article <ora-7E02FC.21062116042...@ispnews.usenetserver.com>,
 Leonard Migliore <o...@laserk.com> wrote:



Powerpoint is even worse than that. I have Macs at home and often
generate Powerpoint presentations on them. They generally work fine on
Windows, although it is prudent to check the presentation out for
flakiness (usually in animations) prior to subjecting anyone else to it.

Anyone who wants to migrate this thread still further into another "beat
up on Microsoft" thread might try dragging a vector-graphic PDF file
(e.g. an eps or Illustrator graphic saved as a PDF) into a PowerPoint
slide, and then resizing it to a significantly larger size.

When I do this on a Mac, using Office 2004, the resized, formerly PDF
graphic as seen on screen acquires a severe case of the jaggies, not
only in editing views, but in the full screen mode you'd use for
projecting the slide.  If you print the slide, however, the  enlarged
PDF part of the slide looks just fine.

I think this means that when you drag the PDF into the PowerPoint slide,
the Postscript code for the vector image is brought over into the
PowerPoint file, as demonstrated by the fact that the slide prints fine
on a Postscript printer.

What's used for the on-screen display and projection, however, is not
the rendered Postscript, but just the (raster-format) thumbnail, which
gets jaggy if you enlarge it.

Why does MS do it this way?  Certainly not because they can't render the
Postscript properly -- dozens of other programs do that.  My answer is,
of course, that it's just one more way to try to suppress or deprecate
the open PDF format, so they can impose their own proprietary graphics
formats on the world.

Anyone else see this behavior -- or share this paranoid opinion?

Powerpoint is even worse than that. I have Macs at home and often
generate Powerpoint presentations on them. They generally work fine on
Windows, although it is prudent to check the presentation out for
flakiness (usually in animations) prior to subjecting anyone else to it.

From day 1 Excel was by far superior to Lotus 123 and unlike the Lotus
company has continued to evolve the program.

Helpful person <rrl...@yahoo.com> wrote in news:dd921b83-d788-4035-96ce-
689e3c705...@e39g2000hsf.googlegroups.com:

From day 1 Excel was by far superior to Lotus 123 and unlike the Lotus
company has continued to evolve the program.

One thing I do NOT like about excel, which I use at work, is that
when you click on the printer icon, it automatically assumes you
want to print all 211 pages of your document rather than taking
you to the print setup window. Other programs I use DO NOT do this.

If this is fixable, I'd love to know.

Brian
--http://www.skywise711.com- Lasers, Seismology, Astronomy, Skepticism
Seismic FAQ:http://www.skywise711.com/SeismicFAQ/SeismicFAQ.html
Quake "predictions":http://www.skywise711.com/quakes/EQDB/index.html
Sed quis custodiet ipsos Custodes?

One thing I do NOT like about excel, which I use at work, is that
when you click on the printer icon, it automatically assumes you
want to print all 211 pages of your document rather than taking
you to the print setup window. Other programs I use DO NOT do this.

If this is fixable, I'd love to know.

Powerpoint (as far as I know) was an invention of Microsoft. I must
admit that when it first came out I didn't understand why it was
needed. However, now I consider it almost indespensible.

Helpful person wrote:

Powerpoint (as far as I know) was an invention of Microsoft. I must
admit that when it first came out I didn't understand why it was
needed. However, now I consider it almost indespensible.


Powerpoint was a knockoff of Lotus Freelance. And Project is
horrible--last time I used it it had no keyboard shortcuts, which
makes it dog slow to enter tasks and do updates. It's Timeline 5 for
DOS for my money. Similarly, for writing books and articles, I
recently upgraded from Wordperfect 5.1+ for DOS (circa 1990) to LaTeX
2e, circa 1985. I still miss WP, even with its occasional
peculiarities of placing figures, but none of the publishers take WP
format any more.

With writing especially, I hate binary formats because you can't debug
them--DOS Wordperfect has 'reveal codes' mode, which allows debugging,
but if Word gets confused, good luck pardner. Hope you had good
backups.

Phil Hobbs <pcdhSpamMeSensel...@pergamos.net> writes:
Helpful person wrote:

Powerpoint (as far as I know) was an invention of Microsoft.  I must
admit that when it first came out I didn't understand why it was
needed.  However, now I consider it almost indespensible.

Powerpoint was a knockoff of Lotus Freelance.  And Project is
horrible--last time I used it it had no keyboard shortcuts, which
makes it dog slow to enter tasks and do updates.  It's Timeline 5 for
DOS for my money.  Similarly, for writing books and articles, I
recently upgraded from Wordperfect 5.1+ for DOS (circa 1990) to LaTeX
2e, circa 1985.  I still miss WP, even with its occasional
peculiarities of placing figures, but none of the publishers take WP
format any more.

Was your book (...making it all work) written with Latex?

I used to use word for technical manuals, but it would get confused
with documents 100th the complexity of that. Major bugs
(e.g. subdocuments) remained unfixed after more than a decade.

With writing especially, I hate binary formats because you can't debug
them--DOS Wordperfect has 'reveal codes' mode, which allows debugging,
but if Word gets confused, good luck pardner.  Hope you had good
backups.

Word has that too. It's still useless for anything but simple
documents AFAIK.

I use context now for writing anything - it's a tex macropackage (as
is latex) that I found more flexible to use.

--

John Devereux- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Helpful person <rrllff@yahoo.com> wrote in news:dd921b83-d788-4035-96ce-
689e3c705ae9@e39g2000hsf.googlegroups.com:

From day 1 Excel was by far superior to Lotus 123 and unlike the Lotus
company has continued to evolve the program.

One thing I do NOT like about excel, which I use at work, is that
when you click on the printer icon, it automatically assumes you
want to print all 211 pages of your document rather than taking
you to the print setup window. Other programs I use DO NOT do this.

If this is fixable, I'd love to know.