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For a scientific conference I would like to make a poster. I have noticed that there are three more or less popular classes for that: umbcposter, baposter, tikzposter.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of the classes compared with each other?

Edit: I am not talking about just a list of LaTeX packages with which one can make posters. I am looking for advantages and disadvantages (as already mentioned). This is not provided by How to create posters using LaTeX

Community
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Make42
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    I think you'll find the answer in: http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/341/how-to-create-posters-using-latex – Ignasi Sep 24 '15 at 15:41
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    No, I don't. I found lists and tutorials but no comparison via advantages and disadvantages. – Make42 Sep 24 '15 at 16:34
  • Posters are big things with quite a few (but important) information. That leads to one conclusion: Place stuff by hand. All automated placement needs fixing either way. Choosing a class/package really is a matter of taste. It doesn't matter, if you generate boxes with TikZ, tcb or pstricks. – Johannes_B Sep 24 '15 at 16:37
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    Voting to reopen because this isn't a duplicate. Even if comparing the options is hard/opinion-based (as I think @Johannes_B is insinuating), this should not be closed as a duplicate. – Adam Liter Sep 24 '15 at 16:47
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    Place stuff by hand = use PowerPoint? Or choose package... which one is providing what you are saying? It may be that its a matter of taste, but I can't have taste about something that I haven't tried yet, and for now I wanted to draw on the knowledge of the community instead of trying out every available class (which is what stackexchange is about, I guess). advantages/disadvantages are not about opinion. – Make42 Sep 24 '15 at 16:48
  • What i was trying to say: There are (in my pov) no advantages or disadvantages of one class/package over another. You as the document author are responsible that it looks nice. Everybody may choose their weapons based on own skills. – Johannes_B Sep 24 '15 at 16:58
  • There is no advantage/disadvantage since you just need to put things on a pdf page with a subjective judgement. Our other comparison questions are about functionalities and package conflicts, say, subfig vs. subcaption etc. For posters as lons as you can place things down they work. – percusse Sep 25 '15 at 19:40
  • These are advantages and disadvantages: Conflicting with other packages are concrete disadvantages. Features that are supported by classes are advantages. I'll give examples for what I already found out in an own answer and hope others will add their findings. – Make42 Sep 26 '15 at 10:49
  • You also forget beamerposter and tcolorbox – skan Nov 22 '17 at 10:45
  • @skan: Please feel free to edit information into my answer below, if you have any. – Make42 Nov 22 '17 at 14:36

1 Answers1

7

Please feel to correct or add aspects!

tikzposter

Advantages / Pros

  1. Recently worked on - last time in 2015 (in CTAN is a 2014 version so far)
  2. Supports block columns
  3. Supports "notes" to blocks

Disadvantages / Cons

  1. Conflicts with package hyperref* (= fixed bug, but fix is not yet in CTAN)
  2. Package ragged2e shifts the title in unexpected way*.
  3. Conflicts with package microtype* (= fixed bug, but fix is not yet in CTAN
  4. No free floating blocks supported

|* Own experience

Tips

For package xcolor use \PassOptionsToPackage to pass options to xcolor. Wether you also \usepackage{xcolor} or not makes no difference since tikz already loads xcolor. Because of this options may clash if they are passed directly to a \usepackage{xcolor}. An example:

\PassOptionsToPackage{usenames,dvipsnames,svgnames,table}{xcolor}

baposter

Advantages / Pros

  1. Got a lot of praise

Disadvantages / Cons

  1. Not included in CTAN (but can be rather easily downloaded and included).
  2. Not recently worked on - last time in 2011
  3. I had trouble getting it to work.

a0poster

Advantages / Pros

  1. Feature: Supports large canvases
  2. Provides appropriate font sizes from /tiny (12pt) over \normalsize (24.88pt) to \VERYHuge (107pt)
  3. Support from A0 to A3

Disadvantages / Cons

  1. Does not support any ways of setting blocks
  2. Does not support the change of the definition of \normalsize

beamerposter

Advantages / Pros

?

Disadvantages / Cons

?

tcolorbox

Advantages / Pros

?

Disadvantages / Cons

?

Make42
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  • Can you give references for your points? I know for sure that tikzposter is not conflicting with xcolor in any way. – Johannes_B Sep 26 '15 at 11:24
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    By the way, tikposter has been last worked on in 2015, but the changes did not made their way to CTAN so far. https://bitbucket.org/surmann/tikzposter – Johannes_B Sep 26 '15 at 11:25
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    TikZ poster is based on TikZ which uses xcolor as its main color provider. There cannot be a clash whatsoever. You probably used dvipsnames or similar keys for the package which is not defaulted with TikZ. For that add \PassOptionsToPackage{dvipsnames}{xcolor} before \documentclass. Also they definitely don't clash with hyperref or microtype they must be user errors but not package errors. ragged2e is not even a measure for judging any package. It has a very specific task which is not necessarily meant to support every package out there. These are pretty questionable conclusions. – percusse Sep 26 '15 at 23:32
  • ragged2e: I am using ragged2e a lot. When reading it's purpose at http://ctan.mackichan.com/macros/latex/contrib/ms/ragged2e.pdf it does not sound very special to me. – Make42 Sep 27 '15 at 16:15
  • hyperref: When I add hyperref (without any options) I get the error message "Can only be used in preamble. \HyperFirstAtBeginDocument" – Make42 Sep 27 '15 at 16:20
  • xcolor: True enough: I put all my options into \PassOptionsToPackage` and it works fine. – Make42 Sep 27 '15 at 16:22
  • microtype: Error messages are (no options): "Missing endcsname inserted \end{document}" and "Can be used only in preamble \end{document}". Of course I load microtype and hyperref in the preamble. – Make42 Sep 27 '15 at 16:29
  • The conflict with microtype is a bug. (See, e.g., here.) It was fixed in d870a6a, but this hasn't made its way to CTAN yet, it seems. The problem with hyperref and tikzposter is effectively the same bug as with microtype and tikzposter. – Adam Liter Sep 28 '15 at 01:37
  • Until it is in CTAN, it should be considered a disadvantage, because users will use the CTAN version. However, I'd like to add help: How does one get the newest version of tikzposter into ones repository? – Make42 Sep 28 '15 at 09:55
  • user49283: You can use the @ symbol to ping me. I only saw this because I happened to check back. To answer your question, though, see Where do I place my own .sty or .cls files, to make them available to all my .tex files?. Note that putting this in a local texmf tree means that it will always take precedence over the version in your TeX distribution, at least until you remove it from the local texmf tree. Also, how is getting a lot of praise an advantage/pro? I agree with @percusse that a lot of these conclusions seem questionable. – Adam Liter Sep 28 '15 at 17:13
  • @Adam Liter: The same way that one looks at the number of like a product at Amazon gets considered when buying a product. That would be a Pro. It's not scientific, but pragmatic. – Make42 Sep 28 '15 at 17:21
  • You could ping the maintainer of tikzposter and ask him to push a new version to CTAN. – Johannes_B Sep 28 '15 at 18:50
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    A bad way of selecting a product on Amazon is no better as a way of selecting software. According to your summary, it gets a lot of praise but you had trouble getting it to even work. Does the praise outweigh the non-workingness? Presumably not. And 'I had trouble getting it to work' could mean anything - it isn't a disadvantage without more detail. (Maybe you had trouble getting it to work because your computer blew up or your cat kept walking over your keyboard during testing.) – cfr Sep 30 '15 at 21:00
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    Can you please add your document that leads to these errors? I cannot replicate any of your errors with your description. Also I used these before a lot and neever happened to me either. And again having a specific bug is not an advantage/disadvantage. I can fill the page with baposter bugs. Also where is this praise you are mentioning. I actually seearched and found nothing. And you are missing beamerposter – percusse Oct 01 '15 at 20:35
  • @percusse: Feel free to add to my post. Btw I am using tikzposter by now. – Make42 Dec 08 '15 at 13:32