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I have been trying to get pdfLaTeX, Beamer, and PSTricks to be friendly. The following code compiles without hiccup, and a pics.pdf file containing my diagram is created, but the output presentation is completely blank.

\documentclass{beamer}
\usepackage[pdf]{pstricks}
\begin{document}
\begin{frame}
\begin{pspicture}(1,1)
\psline(0,0)(1,1)
\end{pspicture}
\end{frame}
\end{document}

Thanks in advance for your help.

nimble agar
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    use \usepackage{pstricks,auto-pst-pdf} instead of \usepackage[pdf]{pstricks}. See @Herbert's Answer to Using pdf{pstricks} with beamer doesn't work, but auto-pst-pdf does, why?. Note: With PSTricks latex-dvips-ps2pdf is bulletproof compilation, next is xelatex engine and last priority is pdflatex – texenthusiast Oct 20 '13 at 01:50
  • Yes, actually I just flagged it as a duplicate myself! I wish I had seen the other answer (I did a lot of searching), but I could not get the right keywords. – nimble agar Oct 20 '13 at 02:00
  • with current TeXLive it works. Are you using MikTeX? –  Oct 20 '13 at 07:05
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    @Herbert It does not work on TeXLive 2013 latest update today and I get a blank beamer slide without a line like the Arman got – texenthusiast Oct 20 '13 at 15:26
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    @texenthusiast: It needs the pstricks.sty from http://texnik.dante.de/tex/latex/pstricks/. Should be available from CATN tomorrow, hopefully. –  Oct 20 '13 at 16:03
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    Thanks to @Herbert for the fix for \usepackage[pdf]{pstricks} when using documentclass beamer in version 0.58 of PSTricks dated 2013-10-20 it works on TeXLive (not yet tested myself on MiKTeX). But Any MiKTeX users are welcome to report the result. – texenthusiast Oct 20 '13 at 16:38
  • I use MiKTeX and can only get blank pstricks output, if I use pdflatex. When using just latex, it produces an error: "Invalid argument". – Steven B. Segletes Apr 05 '14 at 01:24

1 Answers1

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I am sure that my answer will be down voted as non constructive but mixing pdfLaTeX, Beamer and PSTricks is a wrong thing to do. I am not saying that it can not be done I am saying it is wrong. Why?

Beamer is LaTeX presentation class based on TikZ/PGF library intended to be use with pdfLaTeX engine. PSTrick is a package which enables easy integration of PostScript language (page description language mostly used for graphics) with TeX engine via

tex->dvips->ps2pdf

process. While modern TeX distributions use pdfLaTeX engine the strong preference of PSTricks for above route remains. There is a LaTeX presentation class called Powerdot based on PSTricks.

Either pick up pdfLaTeX, Beamer, and TikZ/PGF or pick pdfLaTeX (tex->dvips->ps2pdf), Powerdot and PSTricks and stick with it (actually there are some other valid choices like MetaPost, Asymptote, PythonTeX but that is another story).

I use almost exclusively Powerdot+PSTricks due to the simple fact that I started using TeX long before TikZ/PGF and Beamer existed. This is not a holy war. TikZ/PGF community is probably bigger and much more active but I could assure you that both tools could do the job. I actually like to experiment with PythonTeX

Predrag Punosevac
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  • I buy your argument. As it turns out, this was my first time drawing diagrams for a LaTeX document, and PSTricks came to mind before TikZ/PGF. Now I see that I will have to weigh this decision more carefully. I am reusing a diagram from a manuscript in my presentation, so PSTricks is necessary in this case, but in the future I may reconsider. I appreciate that you point this out; I had not considered even looking at TikZ/PGF until now. – nimble agar Oct 20 '13 at 04:52
  • @Arman Actually you are bringing an interesting point. In my field (mathematics) pictures if any are usually submitted as a separate PostScript files. From the action minimizing point of view it makes more sense to stick with PostScript based tools as I do but in my experience Beamer and TikZ/PGF have over 95% of the "market share". – Predrag Punosevac Oct 20 '13 at 04:58