Re: [Phys-l] presentation graphics (was whiteboarding ...)

[John Denker <jsd@av8n.com>]

On 04/29/2012 05:25 PM, Richard Tarara wrote:
> Many books now provide instructors with most of the figures from the
> book in PP format

Minor point:  Almost any format *other* than PP would be preferable:
 EPS, PDF, SVG, et cetera.

>  (and yes some still provide overheads--but for how
> much longer?)

Do we care?  Help me out here.  There's something I'm not seeing.  
Generally I like to avoid extremes, but today I'm having trouble 
seeing anything of consequence between the following two extremes:
 1) material prepared in advance, for a /prepared/ presentation, versus
 2) material improvised on the fly, e.g. during a brainstorming session.


1) For prepared material, I don't want it in any hardcopy form, because
I will want to dissect it, rescale it, annotate it, and combine it with
other ingredients.

2) For improvisational material, I also don't want hardcopy, because
that would quickly become the Library of Babel.  
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Library_of_Babel
That is to say, there would be no chance of finding the particular thing 
I wanted in time to be useful.  I need to be able to scribble, so I need 
something like
  -- chalkboard or whiteboard
  -- tablet PC
  -- blank acetate foils plus pens plus overhead projector
  -- large-format paper flip-charts

Note that there is a somewhat dated joke/stereotype that says mathematicians 
use chalkboards, physicists use 8.5x11 foils, biologists use 35mm slides,
and business executives use paper flip-charts.  Note that 35mm slicdes
have the great disadvantage that you can't scribble on them.

I've spent many hours of my life in seminar rooms that had document
cameras, but I don't recall anybody ever using the things.

You can make a "high tech overhead projector" using a document camera
plus a digital projector, but this is for most purposes a bad deal.
It costs too much and doesn't work nearly as well as a plain old
overhead projector.  The /alleged/ reason for the digital approach
has to do with linking the local seminar room to a remote seminar 
room.  However, in the 99% of cases where the presenter is using 
already-digital graphics, this reason goes out the window.  Also 
note that in general, trying to link two rooms brings up several
large problems and a zerg of nasty small problems, none of which
are relevant to the sort of things you need to do in an ordinary
classroom.

There may be other cultures, so I don't want to overstate this, but
in the culture I've lived in, document cameras are quite far down 
on the list of things to worry about.  If somebody has a killer app
for document cameras, I'd be interested to hear about it.

If I need to digitize historical documents, I don't do it on the fly
during a presentation.  I do it in advance, using a flatbed scanner.
That's sorta like a camera, only different.

Also note that having an overhead projector and having a VGA projector
are not mutually exclusive.  In a room with two VGA projectors, an
overhead projector, and a whiteboard, it would not be unusual to find 
me using all of them at the same time:  outline there, animation here,
extemporaneous scribbles somewhere else, et cetera.

Also note that "presentation graphics" is not synonymous with powerpoint.
There are *lots* of other things you can use.  The last time I used
powerpoint was 20 years ago, maybe longer.  I "could" use it;  I just 
don't want to.  I use other tools, notably inkscape, which is incomparably 
more flexible and powerful.  Typically the final product is stored in 
PDF format, which is incomparably more portable and reliable.

Even if I'm giving a talk at Redmond, I can't afford the risk that 
their version of powerpoint is incompatible with mine.  Their feelings
get hurt when I choose not to use powerpoint ... but in fact all their
machines have PDF viewers installed.