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I previously asked about tricks for reducing typing when writing beamer presentations. I thought it might be useful to write a few macros for common commands. E.g., something like this:

\newcommand{\bi}{\begin{itemize}}
\newcommand{\ei}{\end{itemize}}
\newcommand{\be}{\begin{enumerate}}
\newcommand{\ee}{\end{enumerate}}
\newcommand{\bb}{\begin{block}}
\newcommand{\eb}{\end{block}}

I'm always a little wary about defining macros in case it introduces issues. In particular, I encountered problems when trying to write a macro for \begin{frame}.

Has anyone already done this and worked out a good set of macros?

I'd also be interested in whether experienced users think macro redefinition in this case is worth the bother.

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Jeromy Anglim
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    I would advise against having commands that start an environment. It makes it harder to read when environments start and stop if you start obfuscating the \begin and \end commands. – Seamus Oct 14 '10 at 10:14
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    If typing is what you are concerned about, I suggest defining keyboard shortcuts/macros in Vim/Emacs/whatever editor you use instead. – Daisy Sophia Hollman Nov 15 '10 at 13:05

3 Answers3

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I'm not a big fan of using macros in this way. It does cut down on a bit of typing, but tends to make the source code much more opaque. A better solution is to use an editor that allows you to assign bits of code to shortcuts. For example, I use TeXShop (Mac OSX) and have set the key combination Ctrl+Opt+Cmd+1 to insert the code

\begin{enumerate}
   \item
\end{enumerate}

and place the cursor right after \item. This cuts down on typing (I just have to mash down the bottom left of my keyboard and type a number) while still producing a readable source.

I'm sure that there are ways of reproducing this functionality with other editors and on other operating systems as well; this answer to a very similar question suggests the AutoHotkey utility for Windows.

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Ross Churchley
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Emacs+AucTeX already has built in keyboard shortcuts for adding environments, sections and so on (with labels added automatically if needed). A similar approach can be achieved in any other text editor with a flexible enough keyboard shortcut defining structure. This is, as has already been pointed out, preferable to TeX macros for new environments.

One beamer specific macro that I use is the following:

\newenvironment{bitemize}{\begin{itemize}[<+->]}{\end{itemize}}

What this does is define a bitemize environment that has consecutive items appear one by one on the slides. This doesn't really save all that many keystrokes, but [<+->] is tricky to type in a hurry, and since I use Emacs' C-c C-e to add environments, it saves me navigating back to the top of the itemize environment to add it.

One could also do the following for a similar small saving when using alert:

\newcommand{\balert}[1]{\alert<+->{#1}}

I expect this will reveal consecutive alerts on consecutive slides. (I haven't used this, I just thought of it now. I don't tend to use alert, but I know people who do.

Seamus
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A very simple way of reducing typing by keyboard shortcuts in Linux is the small, very cool editor Scribes ( http://scribes.sourceforge.net/ ), where you can import and export your shortcuts as xml. An example of latex shortcuts is at the download site.

For Beamer, I created my own and simply type:

  • fr for the whole frame environment or
  • bl for a block,
  • de for a description,
  • item for an itemize environment.

That works very well and is really fast.