The syntax of (basic) overlay specifications is the following: They are comma-separated lists of slides and
ranges. Ranges are specified like this: 2-5, which means slide two through to five. The start or the end of
a range can be omitted. For example, 3- means “slides three, four, five, and so on” and -5 means the same
as 1-5. A complicated example is -3,6-8,10,12-15, which selects the slides 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 10, 12, 13, 14,
and 15.
lyx Overlay sp e cifications can also be given in L
Y
X. You must give them in T
E
X-mode (otherwise the pointed
brackets may be “escaped” by L
Y
X, though this will not happen in all versions). For example, to add an
overlay specification to an item, simply insert a T
E
X-mode text like <3> as the first thing in that item.
Likewise, you can add an overlay specification to environments like theorem by giving them in T
E
X-mode
right at the start of the environment.
4.1.2 Mode Specifications
This subsection is only important if you use beamer’s mode mechanism to create different versions of your
presentation. If you are not familiar with beamer’s modes, please skip this section or read Section 7 first.
In certain cases you may wish to have different overlay specifications to apply to a command in different
modes. For example, you might wish a certain text to appear only from the third slide on during your
presentation, but in a handout for the audience there should be no second slide and the text should appear
already on the second slide. In this case you could write
\only<3| handout:2>{Some text}
The vertical bar, which must be followed by a (white) space, separates the two different specifications 3
and handout:2. By writing a mode name before a colon, you specify that the following specification only
applies to that mode. If no mode is given, as in 3, the mode beamer is automatically added. For this reason,
if you write \only<3>{Text} and you are in handout mode, the text will be shown on all slides since there
is no restriction specified for handouts and since the 3 is the same as beamer:3.
It is also possible to give an overlay specification that contains only a mode name (or se veral, separated
by vertical bars):
\only<article>{This text is shown only in article mode.}
An overlay specification that does not contain any s lide numbers is called a (pure) mode specification.
If a mode specification is given, all modes that are not mentioned are automatically suppressed. Thus
<beamer:1-> means “on all slides in beamer mode and also on all slides in all other modes, since nothing
special is specified for them,” whereas <beamer> means “on all slides in beamer mode and not on any other
slide.”
Mode specifications can also be used outside frames as in the following examples:
\section<presentation>{This section exists only in the presentation modes}
\section<article>{This section exists only in the article mode}
You can also mix pure mode specifications and overlay spec ifications, although this can get confusing:
\only<article| beamer:1>{Riddle}
This will cause the text Riddle to be inserted in article mode and on the first slide of a frame in
beamer mode, but not at all in handout or trans mode. (Try to find out how <beamer| beamer:1> differs
from <beamer> and from <beamer:1>.)
4.1.3 Action Specifications
This subsection also introduces a rather advanced concept. You may also wish to skip it on first reading.
Some overlay-specification-aware commands cannot only handle normal overlay specifications, but also
so called action specifications. In an action specification, the list of s lide numbers and ranges is prefixed by
hactioni@, where hactioni is the name of a certain action to be taken on the specified slides:
\item<3-| alert@3> Shown from slide 3 on, alerted on slide 3.
In the ab ove example, the \item command, which allows actions to be sp e cified, will uncover the item text
from slide three on and it will, additionally, alert this item exactly on slide 3.
Not all commands can take an action specification. Currently, only \item (though not in article mode
currently), \action, the environment actionenv, and the block environments (like block or theorem) handle
them.
By default, the following actions are available:
24