Using revealjs and quarto together is a powerful combination especially as there are many R packages for creating interactive html based data visualisations and showing output under code chunks can be used as a teaching tool. However, many revealjs presentations take a digital only approach without giving thought to people who print notes or prefer using pdf files. The unrestricted nature of html based presentations can make the pdf output an afterthought leading to problems if the user tries to convert the presentation to a pdf. I have also sometimes wanted to be able to create a presentation that has an academic aesthetic like the beamer style while at the same time use moving elements and interactivity. My proposed solution for both of these use cases is a beamer inspired revealjs theme which adds a border around the main presentation area to encourage only using the printable space.
The theme as used in my demo presentation makes some changes to the configuration so that the presentation is reminiscent of a classic beamer presentation, such as removing the progress bar and menu button. However, the same functionality exists through shortcuts, such as using ‘o’ to show the overview or using ‘e’ to view an exportable presentation. Whether the presentation will look good when exported to pdf may depend on which interactive features are used in the presentation, but through my testing with functions such as ggplotly I have been generally pleased with the static version as well.
The demo presentation I have developed is shown in Figure 1. To use the theme for your own presentation, download the code from freierson/my-beamer-inspired-revealjs-theme and modify the style to your liking.
To download a pdf version of a revealjs presentation press ‘e’ and print to pdf using your browser. Using this theme the results tend to look similar to a classic beamer presentation.