CMS4talks - user manual

general Overview
Installation
enhance(d) Slide Extraction
edit Talks
edit Slides
The Working Collection
The Search Function

Installation

 Now you can start working with CMS4talks.

general Overwiew

The Main Window

After typing java CMS4talks (Be aware of case sensitivity!) you will see the main window.

Lets introduce the buttons (klick on the links for further details):

add a talk

After clicking this button a filechooser will pop up and ask you for a filename. Specify any talk and press "OK". The chosen file will be analyzed and if CMS4talks finds one and only one known command that describes slides, the talk will be automatically processed, i.e. the slides will be extracted and added to the database, as well as a talk representation within CMS4talks will be generated.

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add talks

After clicking this button a directorychooser will pop up and ask you for a directory. Specify any directory. All files in this directory will be analyzed and if they contain slide specifying commands or tags, they will be processed as if they where chosen by hands.

preferred package paths

If you click here a list of paths will pop upp. You can simply add or delete arbitrarily paths.

For succesfully examining given TeX-files CMS4talks needs to know where all your packages are being found. All packages in a TeX-file will be checked for new commands. All of them which are includes in the preferred slide commands list, whill be handled as commands specifying slides.

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preferred slide commands list

If you click here a list of slide specifying TeX-commands will pop upp. You can simply add or delete them or change their priority.

For succesfully examining given TeX-files CMS4talks needs to know which commands specify individual slides.
Lern more about slide commands and enhanced slide extraction here.

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show working collection

During a CMS4talks session you may want to gather a collection of some slides. The working collection is a sort of clipboard where you easily can acces often used slides.

show talk list

After clicking here a list of all talks contained in CMS4talks database appears. It will look similar to the example shown.

Push "edit" to edit selected talk.

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enhance(d) Slide Extraction

In your LaTeX-talk slides can be defined in two way. One way is that slides are defined between two tags like
\begin{slide} and
\end{slide} or they can be defined in a defined command that has the slide and sometimes even the title or some more information as its arguments. An example with two arguments could be
\creatslide{this is a sample title}{this is the slide`s text source}. For determining in which way slides are defined in your talks CMS4talks will ask you every time you want to add a talk. You can avoid being asked in most of the times if you provide CMS4talks some information:
All talks which shall be loades will parsed an all packages which are used within the talk are searched. They will be searched in the preferred paths list. So keep this list up to date.

If you add a talk, all new defined commands and redefined commands within the used packages as well as within the talk itself will be compared to the preferred commands list.
If only one of the commands is found in this list, then the slide defining command is well defined for this talk, and can be added to the system immediately without asking for the right command. While adding a whole directory ("add talks") you won't be asked for the proper command. Therefore using this function requires preferably complete preferred paths list and preferred commands list.

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edit Talks

Choosing a talk in the talk list, will pop up a window similar to this one:

Lets describe the buttons and functions:

Attach first Slide to Talk

Every talk that is added to cms4talk via "add talk" or "add talks" should automatically have its first slide attached to the talk edit window. If you rearange a talk you can attach any other slide as first slide to this talk and it is as easy as this: Select in the working collection the desired slide and push "1st slide" in the talk edit window. NOTE:Don`t forget to save changes.

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Go to Talk`s first Slide

If there is a first slide attached to the talk, pushing this button will open a slide edit window with the talk`s first slide.

Export a Talk to Disk

Having edited some slides and rearanged a talk or created a new talk, you might want to export it to disk (e.g. for further finetuning within your TeX-system and .ps-processing...).
Clicking "export" will open a filechooser. Select a filename and CMS4talks will write the entire talk to disk. If you set up the slide order properly the ordering of the slides in this talk will be as excepted. Nevertheless if some cycles appear (e.g. if you attach a talk`s first slide to some later slides as next slide) CMS4talk will recognize that and finish before cycling.

Learn more about the slide order here.

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edit Slides

Choosing a slide from a list of search results, the working collection or a talk window, will pop up a window similar to this:

Lets describe some buttons and functions:

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Go to next/previous slide

Push this button to go to previous/next slide. It will appear in the same slide edit window.

Setting up the Slide Order

With the possibility of assigning successors and predecessors to all slides you can arrange slides in any order. Keep in mind that a wise order is the assumption for success in talks.

Attach previous Slide

If you rearange the slidesī order you can attach any other slide as previous slide to this slide, and it is as easy as this: Select in the working collection the desired slide and push "prev:". NOTE:Don`t forget to save changes.

Attach next Slide

You can assign the next slide in the same manner as previous slides are assigned.

Hint:

Having the possibility of assigning the next as well as the previous slide might be confusing because in fact it is redundant having both possibilities. Open the file preferences.ini you find in the directory where CMS4talks is installed and change the entry true in line #20 to false. In future versions this setting may be altered more comfortably .

Attach Talk

You can assign a talk slide in the same manner as slides are assigned. You simply chose the talk to be attached from the list of talks. This function enhances the export to disk: If a slide has more than one predecessor, the exporting algorithm first checks if there is a predecessing slide which belongs to the "right" talk, and choses this slide in that case.

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The Working Collection

During a CMS4talks-session you probably don't want to search often used slides again and again. You can store a list of slides in the Working Collection, which looks like that:

It looks like a list of search results without the choose button. And indeed it is implemented just like that.
As we have already learned, there are some functions which get their slides from the working collection. E.g. see sections
"Attach first Slide to Talk" and "Attach previous Slide".

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The Search Function

Clicking the "search for slides"-button opens a new search results window. It looks similar to this:

The following buttons are found:

Clicking one of the three firstnamed buttons opens a small dialog prompting for what you want to search (or exclude).

Wildcards

You can chose between the search for keywords or for incomplete words using wildcards. The wildcard character * will allow you to search incomplete words like you know it from google e.g.
You can chose also another wildcard %. Using this wildcard the search will be automatically performed in fulltextmode i.e. the search will take long time, as the index cannot be used.
In general searches are performed case sensitive. If a search does not lead to any results, there will be automatically performed a case insensitive search.
Though forcing case insensitive search e.g. for the word Sweden can be indirectly done searching for swedeN.

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