printing slide shows

[javiator]

I'm beginning to use Mathematica for my presentations. However, many of my collaborators do not use Mathematica and will not use CDF Player. I've tried printing my slide shows to pdf to distribute to them, however the slides print to a portrait layout, so that the slide information is all contained in the top third of the page, with the bottom two thirds being blank.

My collaborators will insist on having slide print outs. Is there a way to take a Mathematica presentation and print out each slide in slide layout, or at least in landscape?

Thanks,
John

[Michael_Morrison]

John,

How did you generate the PDF? If I create a PDF from a Mathematica document by using File > Save As, the orientation of the resulting PDF is dependent on the Page Setup within Mathematica. For example, if I open a slide show, choose File > Printing Settings > Page Setup > Landscape, and then File > Save As > PDF, I get a set of slides in landscape orientation, and similarly if I choose portrait orientation.

However, if I choose File > Print and then select a PDF printer, then I have to set the orientation at the printer level. (For my OS, that means clicking on Preferences and then changing the orientation.)

Which method are you using to create your PDFs?

Thanks!
Michael

[javiator]

I just got some guidance from Elvis Fefey at Wolfram and he showed how to do it from
Mathematica in the print settings. So I am printing in landscape now.

Do you know if each slide in the Mathematica notebook can be constrained to an 8.5 by 11 landscape
orientation when putting slides together? Since the notebooks are so flexible with regard to window
resizing, it's usually the case that the slide is too big for a single 8.5 by 11 slide and printing results in
spillover to another slide. I'd like to be able to design the slides in the notebook knowing that they fit
into an 8.5 by 11 landscape beforehand.

Thanks, Michael.

[Michael_Morrison]

Do you know if each slide in the Mathematica notebook can be constrained to an 8.5 by 11 landscape
orientation when putting slides together? Since the notebooks are so flexible with regard to window
resizing, it's usually the case that the slide is too big for a single 8.5 by 11 slide and printing results in
spillover to another slide. I'd like to be able to design the slides in the notebook knowing that they fit
into an 8.5 by 11 landscape beforehand.

Hmm, good question. We can set the width of the notebook (using PageWidth), but the height is variable and depending on content. There are ways to restrict content size by putting things inside a Pane, but I don't know of any way to put a collection of multiple cells inside a Pane. Since you've started a dialogue with Elvis already, you might want to ask if he has any ideas.

Cheers,
Michael