Introduction

TeX4PPT is designed following the philosophy of TeXPoint, to enable PowerPoint to typeset sentences and equations using the power of TeX. It differs from TeXPoint in that it uses a native DVI to PowerPoint converter, providing extremely fast conversion. Additionally, the result is set using native truetype fonts under windows, providing the highest fidelity.

An example equation set using TeX4PPT can be seen below:

You can view the help file, which is a standard PowerPoint presentation here.

Requirements

TeX4PPT requires:

• PowerPoint 2002 or newer.
• A TeX installation. (Tested with MiKTeX, but should work for others.)
• It is recommended that cleartype is turned on.

Download

The latest version is TeX4PPT 1.2 (5.7 MB), released on 13/05/2005.

Version 1.2 fixes a couple of minor bugs:

• Large brackets now display correctly when animation is turned on.
• "Not equal" signs and similar symbols using the zero width / now render correctly.
• The listing of the files in the template directory has been made more robust.

The current version is not compatible with PowerPoint 2007. A compatible version for PP2007 will be forthcoming when I receive my copy of PP2007 ....

Technical

TeX4PPT works by converting the TeX source to a DVI file. The DVI file is then converted to an XML file that is compatible with PowerPoint's web archive format (extension .mht). This file can then be loaded into PowerPoint. A small piece of VBA code ensures that this all happens behind the scenes. The DVI to XML converter understands all DVI commands with the exception of some "specials". It will correctly interpret colour specials, but will not handle postscript specials, such as EPS figures or postscript commands, such as those used by PSTricks. Since the resulting object is a native PowerPoint object it correctly handles transparency.

A final word of caution: Microsoft have not exposed the "turn on embed true type fonts" in the office VBA language, and hence it is not possible to turn this on by default. Hence, if you wish to present presentations made with TeX4PPT on other machines without TeX4PPT installed, please ensure that you check this item under the options->save menu before saving your final presentation.