In beamer, What's the "right way" to scale a slide element down to better fit?

Question

I want to scale down an element in a slide so that it fits the width and/or height better. I'm willing to reduce the font size, use something like a scalebox/resizebox, or anything similar (not space squeezing though). The thing is, I want to avoid lower-level or "non-beamerish" commands, as well as avoiding choosing explicit font sizes; rather, I would like an acceptable default scaling.

What's the "beamer-idiomatic" way of doing this?

Could shrink and squeeze options suffice? They are in beamer manual, page 61, section 8.1. — Rmano, Jun 08 '16 at 15:48
You explicitly mention fitting to "width". Does that mean that height need not be considered in the fit? Also, how do you want the "ideal" structure of the fix? E.g. Scale by this %, fit this specified width, or make [A] the same size as [B]. — Steven B. Segletes, Jun 08 '16 at 16:23
Can you tell us, what such an "element" could be? I guess there is not "the right way" for all possible elements. — samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz, Jun 08 '16 at 16:32
@m13r: I might, when I'm back in the office in a week or so, but - I asked a general question. Suppose it's a table in a slide which has so much content it doesn't just fit. — einpoklum, Jan 19 '17 at 19:44
@einpoklum: maybe you could use \resizebox for tables as suggested here: http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/5067/shrinking-tables-for-presentations — m13r, Jan 20 '17 at 07:32

score 12 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 24 '17 at 15:03

To achieve a very similar goal I generally use the following:

\begin{frame}
\frametitle{Size changed}
\scalebox{0.8}{\begin{minipage}{1.20\textwidth}

... your content here ...

\end{minipage}}
\end{frame}

I do not know how to compute the combined values of the scale factor and of the minipage width, I generally try several values until it satisfies me.

For example, the following content:

\begin{itemize}
\item First item.
  \begin{itemize}
  \item First subitem.
    \begin{itemize}
    \item \lipsum[75]
    \item \lipsum[66]
    \item \lipsum[75]
    \end{itemize}
  \item Second subitem.
  \end{itemize}
\item Second item.
\item Third item.
\end{itemize}

gives:

and if you change the scale/minipage values to 0.6/1.6 you obtain:

For a centered table I use:

\begin{frame} {Scale Items}
\makebox[1.1\linewidth][c]{\scalebox{0.8}{\begin{minipage}{0.8\linewidth}
\begin{tabular}{l | c | c | c | c }
      & Column1 & Column2 & Column3 & Column4 \\
\hline \hline
Line1 & Value11 & Value12 & Value13 & Value14\\ 
Line2 & Value21 & Value22 & Value23 & Value24\\
Line3 & Value31 & Value32 & Value33 & Value34\\
Line4 & Value41 & Value42 & Value34 & Value44 
\end{tabular}
\end{minipage}}}
\end{frame}

which leads to:

and if you change \scalebox{0.8} to \scalebox{1.2} then you will have the following result:

In beamer, What's the "right way" to scale a slide element down to better fit?

1 Answers1

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