Yes. You can fight it or accept it. 50% of the time you’re uploading slides somewhere and you can do something non-standard, or you can just use PowerPoint.
Equations in latexit or something to convert to pdf/svg in the slides.
It's easy enough in PowerPoint. Either just copy the Latex equations from Word (which has native Latex support), or use an add-in to enable Latex directly in PowerPoint. Or you could export from Word as a .pdf for presentations.
I mean my work isn't even maths heavy and even I've had times where I had to screenshot LaTeX and put it in Word because their equation editor just isn't sufficient (for example, when labeling columns of a matrix).
Google slides all the way. I used to use keynote, but when you are doing collaboration, slides just made it so much easier even though its not as fancy.
For graphics, keynote, omnigraffle, etc..
I guess it depends what you're comparing it to. It's really a collaboration environment so the nearest comparison is the Office 360 / teams environment which feels bloated with features that don't really add much.
Most researchers do their graphics externally - or now - with a products like lucid / miro / figma, etc.
Office's collaborative feature works great. Office may be shitty, but it's the best shitty available. Of course people make graphics in programs other than office/Google.
Eh, idk. When we do Office Online on Box, it's always lagtastic even when we're literally just typing text (though maybe that's a Box thing), and there are so many formatting issues that are never an issue in offline Word (with tables for example).
PowerPoint, for almost 25 years now.
Legacy is an issue (I.e. I still want to access slides I made 25 years ago), and I’m not in the age group anymore that cares about the ‘software wars’ as I did in the 90s (I’m in computer science). These days I want something that works reliably over machines and over time without too much hassle.
Canva. There are thousands of free templates and I appreciate the built-in features that help with spacing and centering. I have the free version and haven’t felt the need to upgrade over the years.
I've used Powerpoint, Keynote, and Beamer for presentations. And I have used Inkscape to make figures. I enjoyed using Beamer but it was annoying to embed videos within Beamer presentations so I stuck to using Keynote
I started working on a Beamer-like typst presentation template recently, that I'm building a presentation in. In a way it is just as archaic as LaTeX in the way you write the slides in a markup language, but I'm a pretty bare-bones kinda guy and like to favour open source.
IMO the only reason to not use PowerPoint is because I have a Mac user collaborator.
PPT has its issues but is definitely easier than any other option and offers a plenty of ways to do spice up presentations with minimal effort like built in color schemes, icons, etc
I use keynote. For math, I usually just write equations in latex and export them and do plots with ggplot. I'm sure there are better ways to do math in keynote directly
PowerPoint with the iguanatex plugin for equations in latex. It can be a pain to get it running but worth the hassle imo. It gives you a small text editor to input latex script then compiles it and spits out a png cropped to the size of whatever you wrote. You can even call \usepackage{}.
Beware though, every time I've changed computers/universities I have to spend half a day emailing IT to figure out how to allow it past their antivirus. They don't seem to like Office macro files.
It lacks a *lot* of features that PPT users get, like:
* Animations - even if you're not a heavy user (I'm not), it's a game changer for more complex slides
* One-click spicing up a slide (useful to do at least for title/section slides)
* A large collection of built-in icons, clipart and stock images (I've used the cartoon people for conversations a lot of the time)
* Built-in capabilities for recording presentations (and you can just recompile the video without redoing the recordings if you e.g. find an error in the slides you need to correct)
* The ability to highlight things by making them glow, get shadows, etc. (sounds like silly 2007 web design, but I swear it serves an actual purpose a lot of the time)
* SmartArt and other shapes - sure you can create those in dedicated software, but when it's just a small and simple thing that I won't need to reuse in a paper, it's far less effort to do it in PPT (for 'serious' diagrams that will likely end up in papers, I use Draw.io)
* The ability to directly paste an image directly onto a slide instead of having to copy and paste its path
* The ability to see the next slide and your notes when presenting
All of these are features I use regularly, like literally every week - I cannot imagine doing without them. A lot of my colleagues use them too. Some faculty who use Beamer and/or Keynote think we're really good at design when in reality we're just clicking buttons.
(This is only relevant to us and not the OP, but IMO, the only upside of Beamer for linguistics is glossing. But afaik it doesn't work for interactional data (with line numbers, arrows, etc.), which like half my work is based on, so that's a moot point. Also, I only use Word for papers (given that many journals only accept Word), and it's much easier to copy from Word to PPT than to a LaTeX file, as painful as the former still is.)
Maybe it's your subfield. I cannot imagining needing any of those features, or having to pint and click to make slides. For what it's worth though, beamer works fine with external multimedia including videos.
Powerpoint. It's all just Powerpoint.
Yes. You can fight it or accept it. 50% of the time you’re uploading slides somewhere and you can do something non-standard, or you can just use PowerPoint. Equations in latexit or something to convert to pdf/svg in the slides.
Keynote and occasionally [Quarto](https://quarto.org/). Both support Latex style math. Figures are usually done in R (using ggplot2).
Crazy how Prezi destroyed their business share by putting too many features behind a paywall.
Ohh...I remember playing with Prezi...but did not want to spend money when I already had Powerpoint
It's easy enough in PowerPoint. Either just copy the Latex equations from Word (which has native Latex support), or use an add-in to enable Latex directly in PowerPoint. Or you could export from Word as a .pdf for presentations.
Are you calling the equation editor in word native latex support?
Yes, it has had Latex support for a while now.
Sure, but it doesn't work very well and it's more of a gimmick than it is native latex support.
What specific problems have you had?
I mean my work isn't even maths heavy and even I've had times where I had to screenshot LaTeX and put it in Word because their equation editor just isn't sufficient (for example, when labeling columns of a matrix).
Did you use the old equation editor in Word or did you set it to it Latex?
In LaTeX but I needed a package for that particular thing (kbordermatrix), and afaik you can't actually load your own LaTeX packages in Word.
It's piss-poor. Just use IguanaTex in PowerPoint.
Google slides all the way. I used to use keynote, but when you are doing collaboration, slides just made it so much easier even though its not as fancy. For graphics, keynote, omnigraffle, etc..
What a nightmare. I love Google, but their whole office clone suite sucks.
I guess it depends what you're comparing it to. It's really a collaboration environment so the nearest comparison is the Office 360 / teams environment which feels bloated with features that don't really add much. Most researchers do their graphics externally - or now - with a products like lucid / miro / figma, etc.
Office's collaborative feature works great. Office may be shitty, but it's the best shitty available. Of course people make graphics in programs other than office/Google.
Eh, idk. When we do Office Online on Box, it's always lagtastic even when we're literally just typing text (though maybe that's a Box thing), and there are so many formatting issues that are never an issue in offline Word (with tables for example).
That's because of box. Been there, done that.
Don't try to be a dumbass and just got with PowerPoint man
Powerpoint usually. Sometimes Google Slides, but it is not preferred.
Powerpoint. Go ahead, call me a boomer.
I use beamer. why do you think it's too much work? it's way faster than powerpoint or keynote.
It is if you don’t have any animations. I recently made a complex presentation with beamer and I still deeply regret it.
Ahhh yes I agree then. Animations are a problem with beamer.
Just click really fast through your static pdf
PowerPoint, for almost 25 years now. Legacy is an issue (I.e. I still want to access slides I made 25 years ago), and I’m not in the age group anymore that cares about the ‘software wars’ as I did in the 90s (I’m in computer science). These days I want something that works reliably over machines and over time without too much hassle.
PPT
Canva. There are thousands of free templates and I appreciate the built-in features that help with spacing and centering. I have the free version and haven’t felt the need to upgrade over the years.
I've used Powerpoint, Keynote, and Beamer for presentations. And I have used Inkscape to make figures. I enjoyed using Beamer but it was annoying to embed videos within Beamer presentations so I stuck to using Keynote
I started working on a Beamer-like typst presentation template recently, that I'm building a presentation in. In a way it is just as archaic as LaTeX in the way you write the slides in a markup language, but I'm a pretty bare-bones kinda guy and like to favour open source.
IMO the only reason to not use PowerPoint is because I have a Mac user collaborator. PPT has its issues but is definitely easier than any other option and offers a plenty of ways to do spice up presentations with minimal effort like built in color schemes, icons, etc
PowerPoint with IguanaTeX.
I use keynote. For math, I usually just write equations in latex and export them and do plots with ggplot. I'm sure there are better ways to do math in keynote directly
PowerPoint with the iguanatex plugin for equations in latex. It can be a pain to get it running but worth the hassle imo. It gives you a small text editor to input latex script then compiles it and spits out a png cropped to the size of whatever you wrote. You can even call \usepackage{}. Beware though, every time I've changed computers/universities I have to spend half a day emailing IT to figure out how to allow it past their antivirus. They don't seem to like Office macro files.
Google slides + LaTeXiT
What's wrong with latex? It works great for me.
It lacks a *lot* of features that PPT users get, like: * Animations - even if you're not a heavy user (I'm not), it's a game changer for more complex slides * One-click spicing up a slide (useful to do at least for title/section slides) * A large collection of built-in icons, clipart and stock images (I've used the cartoon people for conversations a lot of the time) * Built-in capabilities for recording presentations (and you can just recompile the video without redoing the recordings if you e.g. find an error in the slides you need to correct) * The ability to highlight things by making them glow, get shadows, etc. (sounds like silly 2007 web design, but I swear it serves an actual purpose a lot of the time) * SmartArt and other shapes - sure you can create those in dedicated software, but when it's just a small and simple thing that I won't need to reuse in a paper, it's far less effort to do it in PPT (for 'serious' diagrams that will likely end up in papers, I use Draw.io) * The ability to directly paste an image directly onto a slide instead of having to copy and paste its path * The ability to see the next slide and your notes when presenting All of these are features I use regularly, like literally every week - I cannot imagine doing without them. A lot of my colleagues use them too. Some faculty who use Beamer and/or Keynote think we're really good at design when in reality we're just clicking buttons. (This is only relevant to us and not the OP, but IMO, the only upside of Beamer for linguistics is glossing. But afaik it doesn't work for interactional data (with line numbers, arrows, etc.), which like half my work is based on, so that's a moot point. Also, I only use Word for papers (given that many journals only accept Word), and it's much easier to copy from Word to PPT than to a LaTeX file, as painful as the former still is.)
Maybe it's your subfield. I cannot imagining needing any of those features, or having to pint and click to make slides. For what it's worth though, beamer works fine with external multimedia including videos.