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I'm trying to produce handouts for students of lecture notes that I've written using Beamer -- I'd like the handouts and presentation slides to look exactly the same except have gaps in the handout version for students to fill in information. In other words, I'd like to preserve the spacing with say specific equations/text removed.

I've tried the \only command, but that doesn't seem to preserve the spacing (it removes it completely and closes up the gap).

Is there a simple way to do this without just setting the text to "white" or having to insert spacing commands everywhere? [I can do it this way, but would prefer something more "automatic"]

Mark
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  • You can use \visible<handout:0>{stuff to hide in handout}. – Herr K. Jan 27 '15 at 03:08
  • @kevin Thanks -- this was driving me insane. I just found out that I can do \onslide<handout:0> too, but \invisible<handout> seems cleaner. – Mark Jan 27 '15 at 03:11
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    Related, maybe duplicate?: http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/220723/enhanced-fill-in-the-blank-document, using a modified censor package. – Steven B. Segletes Jan 27 '15 at 03:19
  • @StevenB.Segletes I don't think this is a duplicate because, at least as stated, the requirements here are much simpler and can be met by beamer. censor seems unnecessary here. [It may be a duplicate of something else - I just don't see it as a duplicate of that particular question.] – cfr Jan 27 '15 at 03:38
  • @cfr A good point you make. – Steven B. Segletes Jan 27 '15 at 03:48

1 Answers1

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This creates a command \handoutgap{} which will leave a gap in handout mode, typesetting the content normally otherwise.

\documentclass[handout]{beamer}
\newcommand\handoutgap[1]{\invisible<0| handout:1->{#1}}

\begin{document}

  \begin{frame}
    This is some text and \handoutgap{that bit is} missing.
  \end{frame}

\end{document}

The handout:

handout

The presentation:

presentation

cfr
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  • +1, a challenge also: could you make \handoutgap overlay aware :P – Herr K. Jan 27 '15 at 03:24
  • @KevinC In what sense? Overlays have no meaning for handouts, do they? That is, what should the overlay specification do? – cfr Jan 27 '15 at 03:26
  • @KevinC Note that it is trivial to make the command overlay aware because beamer alters the syntax of \newcommand. In a sense, it already is overlay aware but no use is made of any overlay specification in the macro. I just don't see what such a specification could usefully be used for. – cfr Jan 27 '15 at 03:32
  • Yes, it's easy to define overlay aware commands in Beamer, but not so much if you want to have the <handout:1-> option as its default. I haven't thought of an easy way to do that, well, other than introducing conditional statements like \if. – Herr K. Jan 27 '15 at 20:33
  • For example, I have a \fillblank command defined as \newcommand<>{\fillblank}[1]{\uline{$\quad$\visible#2{\textcolor{blue}{#1}}$\quad$}}. In the presentation mode, Question: \fillblank<+->{answer} first shows the question with a blank, and then the answer appears in blue. Suppose in the handout mode I want to hide the answer, as the OP does, I would have to include | handout:0 for every \fillblank I use. This is inconvenient. – Herr K. Jan 27 '15 at 20:33
  • So I'm wondering if one could "append" the option handout:0 to \fillblank, as append style in TikZ, so that whenever handout mode is switched on, it always hides the content, and in presentation mode, it obeys whatever overlay instructions that are given. BTW, I don't hide answers in my handouts; that's I'm putting off searching for a solution till this question comes up :p – Herr K. Jan 27 '15 at 20:34
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    @KevinC I think you should ask your own question with a full MWE. It isn't possible to deal with it properly in comments and it isn't appropriate to post a response as an answer to a different question. The need in this question was relatively simple and a simple solution is the best one. Doing stuff with TiKZ raises different issues. – cfr Jan 27 '15 at 22:21