12

I'm trying present two concepts side by side in a frame. And I want each lineitem to be vertically aligned. Here is is an example where they are not aligned.

\begin{frame}{An Example of using columns in beamer}

\begin{columns}

\begin{column}{0.48\textwidth}
\color{red}\rule{\linewidth}{4pt}
foo
\begin{itemize}
\item this is line 1 of foo
\item this is line 2 of foo which is long
\item this is line 3 of foo
\end{itemize}
\end{column}

\begin{column}{0.48\textwidth}
\color{blue}\rule{\linewidth}{4pt}
bar
\begin{itemize}
\item this is line 1 of bar
\item this is line 2 of bar
\item need this line to be aligned with line 3 of foo
\end{itemize}
\end{column}

\end{columns}

\end{frame}

enter image description here

arunmoezhi
  • 1,270

2 Answers2

11

Here is a solution via two new commands : \parallelcontent and \parallelitem.

\documentclass{beamer}

\newcommand\parallelcontent[2]{
  \begin{columns}[t]
    \column{0.48\textwidth} #1
    \column{0.48\textwidth} #2
  \end{columns}
}
\newcommand\parallelitem[2]{
  \parallelcontent
  {\begin{itemize} \item #1 \end{itemize}}
  {\begin{itemize} \item #2 \end{itemize}}
}

\begin{document}
\begin{frame}{An Example of using columns in beamer}

  \parallelcontent
  {\textcolor{red}{\rule{\linewidth}{4pt} foo}}
  {\textcolor{blue}{\rule{\linewidth}{4pt} bar}}
  \parallelitem
  {this is line 1 of foo}
  {this is line 1 of bar}
  \parallelitem
  {this is line 2 of foo which is long}
  {this is line 2 of bar}
  \parallelitem
  {this is line 3 of foo}
  {need this line to be aligned with line 3 of foo}

\end{frame}
\end{document}

enter image description here

Paul Gaborit
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  • What if there's a different number of items in the two lists? I mean, in the question the reason for misalignment is due to the different lenght of the texts in the two items of a couple. Another reason could be that one of the two lists has some missing item. – Enlico Oct 25 '16 at 10:12
  • 1
    @EnricoMariaDeAngelis In this case, you may use \parallelcontent with an empty part (for the missing part)... – Paul Gaborit Oct 25 '16 at 10:28
  • Do you mean using \parallelcontent insted of \parallelitem, and manually insert itemize environment in one of the two arguments of \parallelcontent? – Enlico Oct 25 '16 at 11:50
  • @EnricoMariaDeAngelis Exactly. – Paul Gaborit Oct 25 '16 at 22:09
8

One way is to add some phantom text in both columns so that each bullet points "takes" up the same number of lines:

enter image description here

Notes:

  • Also added [t] to align the columns at the top

Code:

\documentclass{beamer}

\begin{document}
\begin{frame}{An Example of using columns in beamer}


\begin{columns}


\begin{column}[t]{0.48\textwidth}
\color{red}\rule{\linewidth}{4pt}
foo
\begin{itemize}
\item this is line 1 of foo
\item this is line 2 of foo which is long
\item this is line 3 of foo 
\end{itemize}
\end{column}


\begin{column}[t]{0.48\textwidth}
\color{blue}\rule{\linewidth}{4pt}
bar
\begin{itemize}
\item this is line 1 of bar
\item this is line 2 of bar \phantom{which is long}
\item need this line to be aligned with line 3 of foo
\end{itemize}
\end{column}


\end{columns}


\end{frame}
\end{document}
Community
  • 1
Peter Grill
  • 223,288
  • Thank you. It worked!! But I feel this is not an elegant way to do it. Very often, people try to compare and contrast two things in a frame and there should be a easy way to do it. – arunmoezhi Oct 31 '14 at 22:02
  • @arunmoezhi: Have modified solution since I first posted it, so slightly simpler, but still involves \phantom{} spacing (but only one one of the \items). I am not much of a beamer expert so perhaps there is a more elegant way in beamer. I do know of other more complicated ways in case you do this very often which would involve packaging a similar process into a macro, but I think using \phantom{} is a common way to tweak things. – Peter Grill Oct 31 '14 at 22:06
  • I'm fine with this simple tweak using \phantom{}. But I just thought someone else might need this feature frequently. – arunmoezhi Oct 31 '14 at 22:09