Re: Rationale for *text* -> \alert{text} for Beamer export?

[Marcin Borkowski <mbork@wmi.amu.edu.pl>]

Dnia 2013-05-01, o godz. 09:17:23
John Hendy <jw.hendy@gmail.com> napisał(a):

> Greetings,
> 
> Just wondering about the rationale behind using *bold* markup for
> \textbf{} in LaTeX export and to \alert{} in Beamer. Was this a
> frequently voiced request? I'm sure I can dig into this somewhere and
> change it, but if the majority prefers bold (not saying they do!),
> should that be the default?
> 
> I'd prefer bold, personally. I don't like red table column titles or
> in lists.

Just my 2 cents:

* In general, you shouldn't use boldface in printed documents (unless
  you have a good reason.  A /very/ good, thought out reason.  And
  usually you haven't one;).).

* In presentations, things are indeed quite different.

* Keeping that in mind, \alert{...} is /better/ than \textbf{...}, just
  like \emph{...} is better than \textit{...}: it is semantic, not
  visual markup.

* If you do insist on boldface as "alerting", just say
    \setbeamerfont{alerted text}{series=\bfseries}
  in your preamble.  Keep in mind, however, that this will break things
  if you use alert<...>{...}.  Take this document, for instance:

\documentclass{beamer}

\begin{document}
\begin{frame}
  This is \alert{alerted} text.

  And this is \alert<2>{alerted} only on the second slide.
\end{frame}
\end{document}

  In it, text will "wobble" when changing slides.  This is ugly.

* So, what you probably want, is to say
    \setbeamercolor{alerted text}{fg=red!50!black}
  in your preamble, so \alert{...} means a color in the midpoint (in RGB
  linear space) between red and black (you might want to experiment with
  percentages other than 50% or wholly different colors, of course).

> Thanks,
> John

HTH,

-- 
Marcin Borkowski
http://octd.wmi.amu.edu.pl/en/Marcin_Borkowski
Adam Mickiewicz University